April 7, 2026 • 60 mins
Walking shaped humans into who we are—and it’s one of the simplest ways to improve health, mood, and longevity right now. In this episode of Two Percent, Michael sits down with evolutionary geneticist Dr. Melissa Ilardo and writer Foster Kamer to explore what endurance science says about how far humans can actually go, why the brain often quits before the body, and how small daily choices compound into massive long-term outcomes.
We cover the real research behind step counts (including why the 10,000 number is a myth), the minimum effective dose that meaningfully improves health, and how to make walking effortless by stacking it into things you already do. Plus: persistence hunting, sleep differences that change performance, and what ultra-endurance reveals about mindset.
Email us at media@twopct.com.
Two Percent is hosted by Michael Easter. Today’s episode was produced by Joey Fischground, Robbie Hiser, Dana Brawer and Julia Nutter. From Kaleidoscope, our executive producers are Mangesh Hattikudur, Kate Osborn and Julia Nutter. From iHeart, our executive producers are Katrina Norvell and Nikki Ettore. Kaleidoscope’s Head of Video is Maria Paz Mendez Hodes. Our editor is Nick Pomeroy. Our theme music is by Heater Manager.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:23):
Welcome to two Percent. I'm your host, Michael Easter, and
I am thrilled to announce that this is the very
first episode of my new podcast. Now, if you have
not heard of me, you may have seen me on
other podcasts like The Joe Rogan Experience, like Andrew Huberman,
or maybe on TV like CBS Saturday Morning or Good
Morning America. Either way, here's my background. I am a
(00:44):
journalist who has been investigating human health and well being
for about twenty years now. I was an editor at
Men's Health for a long time, worked at other magazines
like Scientific American like GQ. Then I became a professor
for seven years, and in that process I started writing books.
So I ended up writing a book called The Comfort
Crisis and Scarcity Brain. They became bestsellers. They changed a
(01:07):
lot of people and their habits. My work has taken
me to places like conflict zones, to the Bolivian jungle,
to labs at Harvard to neuroscience labs all over the map,
and all these experiences have taught me one thing, and
that's that improving your life it isn't always easy. It
typically comes through embracing discomfort, taking on challenges, big and
small across the days, weeks, months, and years of your
(01:29):
life and leaning into what is hard. That is how
people learn doing hard things. We're going to have long,
in depth, fascinating conversations with some of the world's greatest
thinkers in all different areas. Each person will teach us
something about what it means to live a good life
right now, and it'll all be actionable. And you might
(01:50):
be wondering, why is this called two percent? Two That
is the percent of people who take the stairs when
there is also an escalator available, only two percent. Now,
I would argue every single one of those people knew
that taking the stairs would be better for them, be
better for their physical health, it would be better for
(02:11):
their mental health. Get the vast majority of people, they
choose to do the easy, more effortless thing that not
only is not going to help them in the long run,
but that might actually harm them in the long run.
So we're going to look at how do we find
challenges big and small can be as simple as the
staircase that can improve our lives in the long run,
And how do we actually build the sort of online
(02:32):
mental networks to make taking the harder path an easier
decision to make. Now, what is our first episode? That
is a very important one. It's like, how are you
going to open this thing? Today's episode focuses on one
of the most fundamental things that a human being can do,
and a thing that we no longer do quite as much,
and it is absolutely hurting our well being. We're gonna
(02:55):
be talking about walking. So for some context here, walking
absolutely shape humans into who we are and allowed us
to take over the world. It is our most fundamental act.
We used to walk about twenty thousand steps a day,
and the average person today only takes about four thousand steps. Now,
I've been thinking about this because a year ago today,
(03:18):
I was in the middle of the Utah Desert on
an eight hundred and fifty mile hike across southern Utah.
So what we'd have to do is we'd have to
navigate through the desert find our way. This is considered
the hardest route in the world. We'd have to navigate
down canyons, we would have to find water in this
scorching hot landscape. And I learned so much about myself
(03:42):
and what the human body is capable of through that hike.
We were hiking like twenty five miles a day. It
was one of the greatest adventures I've ever been on
in my life. And so with this anniversary of the hike,
thinking about walking, I wanted to know what is the
human body really capable of walking? Because I surely hadn't
been walking twenty five miles a day before I did
(04:03):
this hike, But then I put myself in that situation,
and all of a sudden I was able to go
severely long distances every single day in a harsh landscape.
So to answer that question, we are bringing in an
evolutionary geneticist named Melissa Alardo. She studies some of the
world's most amazing populations on Earth and really understands what
(04:24):
we are all capable of, no matter who you are.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
The fact that it's like a big achievement to get
ten thousand steps in a day, you know, like that's
something we're rewarding ourselves for when for most of human
history that was probably very standard, if not kind of
below average.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
After that, we're going to bring on one of my
dearest friends who wasn't a big walker, not a real
athletic guy, but one day he left his house in
New York and he started walking and he didn't stop
for a really, really long time. So we're going to
learn what he learned in that journey and what it
can tell us about taking on challenges that are often unexpected.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
How often in life do we want to break out
of the pattern and the thing that we're doing to
get somewhere else. I wish I could come across those
moments every day. I wish I could break my routines
with the moxie of wanting to change sit up and
(05:23):
the impetus to just try something and then go with it.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
And then finally, at the very end, we're going to
cover what the science really says about how many steps
you should take a day, so you know exactly how
much you should be walking, even if you don't want
to take on an epic walk like I did. And
I will give you a hint. No, it is not
ten thousand. So let's get into it. Okay, So story time,
(05:47):
I was just on a fourteen hour flight back from Europe. Now,
I spent about ten hours of that flight writing, researching,
reading nerdy studies. But then eventually my brain it just
had enough, so I turned on a movie. I turned
on a movie called The Long Walk. Now, It is
based on a Stephen King novel, and in full Stephen
(06:09):
King fashion, it has got the most insane murderous plot
line of all time. Here's what happens in the movies.
A bunch of boys. They're rounded up in this post
apocalyptic world and then they are asked to walk as
far as they possibly can without stopping. So I'm gonna
play you a little preview of how this plays out
and what the rules for this are.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
I'm not gonna go through the whole rule book, but
it boils down to this. When you fall below the
speed of three miles per hour, you get your ticket
walk until there's only one of you left.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Now.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
When I first turned on this movie and heard the rules,
I thought you took a bunch of untrained teenage These
people have not been preparing for this walk physically. I
don't know. I bet they'll get twenty thirty forty miles. No, literally,
all of the boys make it at least one hundred miles,
and the one who wins another spoiler alert makes it
more than three hundred miles. So I wanted to know
(07:17):
is this actually possible? These kids have no training. They
also only have resources from a canteen and a couple sandwiches.
Could a human being actually walk that far without stopping?
So to answer this question, we have Melissa Alardo, who
literally studies extreme physical acts, and she has unbelievable answers
(07:37):
to all the questions I had about this insane movie.
Thanks for being here.
Speaker 5 (07:43):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
You have done a lot of endurance stuff. Have you
done ultra runs? I know you do crazy backcountry ski touring.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
I do long backcountry ski tours. I didn't iron Man.
I actually was training for a fifty mile ultra and
I had some knee problems, so I haven't. I haven't
done an ultra yet, but I'm around runners and I yeah,
I love endurance sports.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
So a lot of the boys end up going past
one hundred miles. The one who wins, I think goes
more than three hundred and fifty miles. Big question is
how realistic do you think this is? Because the key,
of course, is that you cannot drop below three miles
an hour. If you stop, you basically get shot. Do
you think it's physically possible for a person to walk
(08:29):
NonStop three miles an hour for that long.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
I do think it's possible. I think you know, obviously
it's extraordinary circumstances.
Speaker 5 (08:35):
In the movie. So, I mean, there are a lot.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Of people, obviously, people who mostly train, who do ultramarathons.
What's incredible about the human body is that if you
keep the effort low enough, you know, we're really well
adapted in general to endurance. So yeah, with some training
a really steady pace. Obviously there are certain things that
they're having to take care of while they're walking that
seem a little bit challenging, but yeah, I think it's possible.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
So why are we so well adapted to endurance?
Speaker 5 (09:03):
There are some theories about this.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Some of it is centers around the fact that we
may have traditionally practiced a form of hunting where our
endurance became an advantage. And there are groups of people
around the world, some of whom I work with, who
continue to practice this kind of hunting. It's called persistence hunting.
We're essentially, you know, we're good at endurance, or we
evolve this endurance feet because when we pursue animals for
(09:29):
long enough, if we can last longer than they do,
they become very easy to hunt. So some people think
that that is the reason that we're so good at
long distance endurance kind of efforts.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
And part of that is because we are really efficient
at cooling ourselves, right, and other animals are not. So
if you just run them down far enough, they'll eventually overheat,
and meanwhile, we're sweating, we're not super hot, and so
we can just keep going and eventually there are dinner
more or less.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Yeah, exactly, And then some of these communities will populate,
will practice this at the hottest part of the day
to in particular, you know, really drive animals into this
point of exhaustion faster.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Okay, so what do you think the biggest hurdles that
these boys would have faced would be.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
There's a number of things, you know, as interesting as
they were thinking about what they were eating, you know,
so there's some comments on what they were eating, what
they were being given to eat. At that energy level,
at that amount of effort, your body's primarily burning fat,
and there are actually ways that you can, you know,
change your diet or your training to push yourself to
burn even more fat at that pace. So you know,
(10:38):
if you're consuming fat, then you're able to last a
lot longer. But if you're consuming you know, like one
of the people is eating, you know, venison, which is
very low in fat, very low in carbohydrates. Your body
has no fuel and so as soon as the glycogen
your muscles is depleted. You know, if you do push
into that point where you're burning carbohydrates, you're you're in trouble,
you know. And that hill gets steep and all of
(11:00):
a sudden their heart rates spikes. They're going to be
They're going to be done.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
For Another thing that I'd noticed too, is because they
didn't name a year in the movie, but I'm assuming
this is the way it's filmed and what people are wearing.
I'm assuming this is post World War two, and so
a lot of the boys are wearing these like work
boots effectively. And I saw that, and I'm just thinking,
(11:23):
oh my god, your feet would be destroyed after fifteen miles,
much less one hundred and fifty. I feel like that
would be a giant limitter.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Oh absolutely, especially once it starts raining and you have
humidity introduced into it. And oh yeah, I was not
then being their footwear.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Before we hit record, we were talking a little bit
about sleep and I had gone into this thinking, I
feel like at hour thirty six, you would start to
just go totally crazy. But you brought up some interesting
points about how the amount of sleep people need differs
and how a person who needs less sleep might actually
(12:02):
be an advantage. So tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Yeah, so there's a rare familial mutation that causes people
to not need as much sleep. So it's these they
call them natural short sleepers, and they sleep generally four
to six hours a night with no ill effects, so
no cognitive effects from that, no, seemingly no health effects.
It actually seems like maybe they live longer. And they've
done some studies kind of replicating this genetic advantage in mice,
(12:30):
and the mice also seems to be very healthy. So yeah,
someone like that would certainly do much better because while
they're going into a sleep.
Speaker 5 (12:37):
Debt, it's certainly not as much of a debt.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
And yeah, that was the one thing I was a
little surprised was they didn't show anyone hallucinating, because surely,
after that long I would imagine you'd be hallucinating pretty hard.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Yeah. Absolutely, A question about those people who need less sleep,
how do we know who they are? If there's a
person out there who goes, oh yeah, I usually sleep
five hours a night. Everyone tells me I need it,
but I feel fine. Is that a way to know?
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Yeah, there's some ongoing studies too to identify exactly that.
You know, there's this one family in which they found
this mutation, and everybody in this family seemed to do
fine with four to six hours of sleep, and so
they know what gene it's acting on, and it seems
like different people may carry different mutations in that gene,
and there may be other genes also that influence how
much sleep we need, because you know, anecdotally, some people
(13:23):
seem to be fine on seven eight hours, some people
need nine to ten. But yeah, I wish I were
one of these lucky people who only needed four to six,
because that's a lot more hours of the.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Day that you have. Totally. One thing I thought was
interesting too, is I don't think any of these people
competing had actually trained for this. I mean, there's kind
of this random sampling of there's a boy from every state.
Howbout the fact that they haven't trained at all factor
into this. And I will note that the boy who won,
(13:54):
he has this line where he says something like, oh,
I've been walking all my life, like this is my
life and he's the one who So how do you
think that would affect things?
Speaker 6 (14:02):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Yeah, I think you know, a lifetime of training in
whatever that looks like would absolutely give you an advantage.
So you know, I mean, I know he was saying
it kind of more metaphorically, but there are communities, like
some of the communities that I work with, they live
in really remote areas, you know, to get around.
Speaker 5 (14:19):
They're very mobile groups of people. They're just walking all
the time. They're walking up steep hills, they're walking you know,
many many miles every day through canyons, and so that's
a form of training in itself. But yeah, otherwise I think,
you know, straight off the couch trying to walk three
hundred and fifty miles would be pretty challenging. Your body
(14:39):
is just not ready to kind of switch into that
endurance mode as quickly if you're not training.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Ever, what I think is interesting, going back to what
we were talking about, how humans are adapted to endurance.
Probably for most of time, if you took a random
sampling of people, they would have been walking, i don't know,
ten fifteen miles a day, caring stuff. In normal life.
They would be much more ready to do something to
be thrown into this, and then today you take the
(15:07):
average person and it's like, yeah, not so much.
Speaker 6 (15:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
The fact that it's like a big achievement to get
ten thousand steps in a day, you know, like that's
something we're rewarding ourselves for when for most of human
history that was probably very standard, if not kind of
below average. Yeah, I think tells you something about the
current walking fitness of our population totally.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
There's a researcher who is now at USC named David Reichlan,
and he studied basically physical activity among the Hadza, and
I think the number he put on it as far
as average steps a day was something like twenty thousand
steps a day on average.
Speaker 5 (15:43):
Yeah, I believe it.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
So before we hit record, you made a really interesting
point and you said that women would likely perform better
in this context and the contest than men.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
So why is that There's this really interesting thing with
the length of races, with running and some other active
that we've seen where the longer the race is, the
more the gap between men and women closes, to the
point where when it's long enough, women actually often do better.
And so you know, when I think in a five
k it's like men on average perform ten percent better
(16:14):
than women. By the time you're getting to one hundred miles,
that gap has narrowed. By the time you're getting to
multi day races through deserts, women consistently perform better. Interestingly,
women also perform better in long distance swims, open water swims,
like very long distances. So there's you know, a temperature
regulation component to that. Somehow women seem to be better
(16:37):
at regulating temperature during these activities. But some of the
theories as to why women do better in these long
distances have to do with how women's bodies oxidize fat.
So how we you know, essentially use fat, which is,
like I said, the primary fuel when you're walking at
that kind of activity level. But then also, you know,
(16:57):
women have the capability being pregnant, and pregnancy is metabolically
the single hardest thing a human can do, so it's
someone calculated it's essentially the same as running a marathon
every day for the entirety of your pregnancy metabolically, so
it's you know, maybe that's what's driving women in these
very long efforts to perform better. But yeah, it would
(17:19):
have been interesting to see what happens if we throw
a few women in there.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
I came across a study where it measured effort in
high intensity interval classes, so basically you know, your CrossFit
type classes, and it found that women, when the coach
would say go your hardest, women would consistently go harder
than men, Like there was almost they were just more
willing to push into the sort of darkness of exercised
(17:45):
induced suffering than the men were, which I thought was fascinating.
Speaker 5 (17:48):
Yeah, and that.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Minds up the lines up with some things that I've
seen about women having in an exercise setting higher pain
tolerance than men. So in some settings it seems like
men have higher pain tolerance than women, but others it
seems that women very much have higher pain tolerance. So
maybe that's how they're able to kind of hang out
in that pain cave a little bit longer than men.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Totally. It's like when I get a blister on a walk,
it's the end of the world, and my wife just
you know, her sock is bloody and she just hasn't
even mentioned it. It's exactly that that man flu is real.
Absolutely so the competitor who ended up winning this thing
what I thought was interesting is that he had a
really sort of positive outlook the entire time he was
(18:29):
trying to keep everyone going. He was always, you know,
happy and smiling. How do you think mindset would factor
into a competition like this.
Speaker 5 (18:36):
Yeah, mindset would be huge.
Speaker 6 (18:38):
You know.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
I'm a geneticist, so a lot of times I think
about things in terms of genetics and genetic predisposition. But
at the end of the day, there have actually been
studies that show that what you are told about your
genes influences your ability more than your genes. So there
was a study where they told people that they were
predisposed to be low exercise or have low exercise capacity
(19:00):
or something like that, and within a very short time,
the way people exercise lived up to that expectation, despite
the fact that their genetics didn't actually line up with that.
So it seems like, you know, the other side of that,
of course, is that if you believe that you have
a really high capacity, if you believe you can win,
then you're probably a lot more likely to win. And
(19:20):
it's really interesting because it's really at the physiological, like
even the molecular level, our bodies respond to what our
brains are saying.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
That's fascinating. Does this sort of line up with the
central governor theory at all, which is basically saying that
your body sort of puts your brain puts a limit
on your physical output in order to sort of protect
yourself so you don't end up going so hard that
you injure yourself and burn out of fuel. Is it
in that lane or is that something totally different?
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Yeah, I mean I would imagine that seems like it
lines up really well, because yeah, normally it's protective to
not push yourself to the brink, but you know, if
you can switch that off. I mean, it's kind of like,
so I work a lot with divers who hold their
breath free diving. You know, our brains tell us we
need to breathe, not when we actually need to breathe,
but when carbon dioxide has built up. And that's also
(20:11):
protective because our body's saying like, uh, oh, you know,
time to breathe. But what really highly trained free divers
will do is they shut off that signal or they
ignore it. You know, they train themselves to ignore this
signal that's saying carbon dioxide is high, and then they
can hold their breath quite a bit longer, so it
becomes much more dangerous at that point, and that's why
(20:31):
sometimes people drown. But it does enable them to hold
their breath for an extraordinary.
Speaker 5 (20:35):
Amount of time.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
So a lot of it is kind of like a
smoke detector, whereas if the smoke detector is going off,
it's sensitive, right. We want the smoke detector to go
off when you burn a piece of toast when you're
cooking something and it ignites. Most times there's not an
actual fire, i e. Danger, but we want the smoke
detector sensitive, so the time that there is an actual fire,
(20:59):
you're going to react and make sure there's nothing wrong.
Is that kind of what we're talking about here.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Yeah, And you know a piece of that is that
we were also talking about before, is that when you're
driving yourself that hard, your body has to ignore other
parts of its physiology to put the effort into the endurance,
So things like your immune system are compromised.
Speaker 5 (21:19):
So a lot of people after long.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Endurance events like ultras will get sick because their immune
system just doesn't have you know, your body doesn't have
the energy to devote all of the resources to everything
that needs those resources.
Speaker 5 (21:31):
So we see a.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Character a competitor who becomes sick over the course of
the race and says, you know, I haven't been sick
in ten years, and it's like, well, yeah, that's not
a coincidence. You know, you're putting your body through the ringer.
It's putting all of its resources into walking, and that
has nothing left for the immune system.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Yeah. I did a long hike through southern Utah. I
was like eight hundred and fifty miles and when I
got back, I got sick within like a week. It
was just like immediately you're home, Okay, you're safe. Now
we're going to show you down and get sick.
Speaker 5 (22:01):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
In terms of what we were talking about with mindset,
have you experienced that when you do some of your
endurance stuff, like especially in the mountains in Utah? So
how you post it on Instagram the other day you
were hiking up a mountain. It looked cold, it looked
like it was at high elevation, and it looked hard.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Definitely, Yeah, And I think you know, I mean it
helps that I just love skiing so much, so it's
it's a lot. You know, I'm in it for that,
and that makes it easier to kind of push through.
But I mean, I'm, you know, in my office and
it's a few degrees cooler than it normally is, and
I'm freezing, but I'm out there and I'm able to
push through very cold temperatures. So it's like, yeah, all
(22:40):
of our we're very able to change our baselines, as
I know you talk about. So I have experienced that,
and it's amazing what you can do if you if
you decide to push through something.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Do you feel like that that there's almost a lesson
there for the average person where if you don't like
to exercise and you find it too hard, simply changing
the environment and finding something that you actually do love
can almost act as fuel to kind of get you
past the hump.
Speaker 5 (23:06):
Oh. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
I mean if you're not excited to get out there,
then you know, if you're tired, you're just not going
to do it, Whereas you know, I could be tired,
but right now it's snowing up in the mountains and
I'm really excited to go ski tomorrow because it's so
much fun, and so I think, yeah, whatever it is
that you can find that joy. Some days, if I'm
feeling really tired after work, I go to spin class,
(23:28):
which feels a little silly sometimes because it's kind of
like a you know, like a dance party on a bike,
but it's really fun, and so there are days where
that's my inspiration. So I think, yeah, finding joy in
whatever you do for exercise just makes it so much easier.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Totally. I've experienced that myself in terms of if I'm
on a treadmill, it's like it's so long, it's so boring,
the minutes go by so slow. But if I go
do a trail run, I'll look down and I've gone
six miles. I'm like, oh, I feel great, great, this
is I'm having a great time. If I was doing
(24:03):
six miles on a dreadmill a mile too, I'd be like,
we need to we need to stop this. This is awful.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (24:08):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
I was on the stairs in the gym the other
day and it was like twenty minutes in.
Speaker 5 (24:12):
I was like, oh, no, I can't do this.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
What do you think In real life most closely mimics
this competition, of course, without the possibility of being shot
at any given moment if you slow down.
Speaker 5 (24:24):
Well, as far as I know, there actually are.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Race is quite similar to this, where it's not so
much where they're making you maintain a specific speed, but
it's you know, last man's I think they're even called
last man Standing or something like that, and you essentially
have to go at a certain distance every hour or
whatever it is, and if you cover that, if you're
able to finish that distance in that time period, you
are still in the race. So and I think people
(24:49):
last quite a while in those I mean, of course
you have, you know, races where there's two hundred plus
miles that you're covering. But it is interesting, and they
mentioned this in the film too. The psychology of not
having a finish line is so different because it's not
that you have to make it somewhere, it's that you
have to outlast everyone else. So yeah, yeah, I can't
(25:09):
imagine what would be like to compete in something like that.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Absolutely. What do you think the sort of big practical
takeaways from this movie are for the average person as
it relates to endurance physiology mindset.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
I would say, get good shoes, don't wear boots when
you're going for one hundred mile, Like I think it's
you know.
Speaker 5 (25:35):
Training helps. All of these things are possible.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
I recently was actually in the Canadian in the mountains
in Canada backcountry skiing for a week with a woman
who was seventy one years old, and we were doing,
you know, fifty two hundred feet of a day and
she was doing that seven days in a row, and
it was just so amazing to me, you know, I mean,
she was keeping a good pace. It was it was
a steady you know, it wasn't a particularly fast pace.
(25:59):
But two interview today for seven days is really impressive
at seventy one. And so I think it's kind of
important to keep in mind that, you know, if you
if you train, if you keep at a good pace,
you're capable of a lot more than I think people
think they are.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Well, thanks for coming on, Melissa, We really appreciate it.
Speaker 5 (26:17):
Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Now. If you want to deeper dive into the science
of endurance, especially as applies to mindset, you can go
to twopct dot com and search exercise fatigue is an
emotion that goes down the rabbit hole, and it gives
you some actionable advice about how you can sort of
turn off or at least lessen that governor in your
brain that is screaming at you. To slow down and
(26:39):
quit when you probably have a lot more in the tank.
Something I'm going to start doing on the show is
bringing in ordinary people who have done something unbelievably physically
challenging and learned something from it. Some of these people
might be ultra marathoners, others might be everyday people who
just went out and started doing something physical and kept
(27:02):
pushing the boundaries and learn something in the process. And
there is no better person to start this idea out
than my good longtime friend Foster camer So. I first
met Foster when I was working in media in New
York City. We were both editors at different publications. We
would occasionally send each other stories to do. And he's
originally from Vegas, so when I moved to Vegas, anytime
(27:24):
we would come into town to meet with his family,
hang out, have holidays, we'd always meet up, hang out,
do something. Foster, you will learn though, is not necessarily
an athletic person. You know, he walks around a lot,
he does a few things, but he's definitely not a
physical specimen. And yet that said, one day he got
some bad news in his life. I'll let him explain that,
(27:47):
and it prompted him to leave his house with a
twenty five pound weight in a backpack on his back.
So he was rocking, and he started walking and each
time he would go to stop, he would keep walking,
keep walking, and it ended in one of the most
amazing physical acts I have ever heard of in my life.
So we're going to bring him on to talk about that,
(28:08):
not to mention he did this thing twice and he
learned so much from it in the process, about the
power of walking, about the power of getting outside what
is ordinary, and things about himself that really reframed what
he had gone through and the news that he received.
So with that all said, we're going to bring in Foster. Foster,
(28:30):
my favorite person from Las Vegas and friend.
Speaker 6 (28:33):
Oh, get out of here.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 6 (28:35):
Thank you, thank you for having me. Michael.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Here's where we need to start. For context. I would
not say that you are not athletic. I would also
not say that you are a David Goggins type. I
don't think you live by your whoop score.
Speaker 5 (28:52):
No.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
I do know that you occasionally, at least used to
enjoy a cigarette or two.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
Not for six years now, but yes, or eight years
eight years actually.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
You go see DJs that begin at the time that
I go to bed.
Speaker 6 (29:10):
Well after that, well after that, you.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Are active, I would say, like a lot of New Yorkers,
shit little.
Speaker 6 (29:19):
Walking inveterate walker. It's true.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Do you go to the gym sometimes?
Speaker 3 (29:24):
I belong to a rock climbing gym, which which was
not the cliche that it is now. A friend got
me into into a rock climbing bouldering about five six
years ago. I'm doing less of that these days, but
I do go to the gym. I did take a
weightlifting class last year. I would not call myself athletic,
(29:47):
though fair spry spry.
Speaker 6 (29:50):
Is going to be a word.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Yeah, But one fine day you do something that I
would classify as very athletic. I would say it put
you in David territory in the sense that you put
on a weighted backpack.
Speaker 6 (30:05):
How much was it twenty five pounds?
Speaker 3 (30:08):
And the first year I did it, I don't think
I actually had anything in it besides the way.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Yeah, So why did you take this walk in the
first place?
Speaker 3 (30:18):
So that same friend who got me into indoor rock
climbing was my best friend of twenty five years.
Speaker 6 (30:25):
His name is Henry. Henry Molina and you met at
summer camp.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
We met at summer camp when I was thirteen years old,
my first day of Sleepway Camp in Cleveland, Georgia Camp
Camp Coleman and yeah, we had an incredible friendship of
twenty five years. We lived together for a time. I mean,
we gotten all kinds of mischief together. When I first
moved to New York. We moved together right before I
(30:51):
turned twenty one. And so you know, he eventually moved
to la and his partner, Margaret, they moved there, and
in twenty twenty he's diagnosed with the squamous cell carcinoma
of the prodded gland, which is a cancer of the
gland behind your sweat land around there. Sorry to all
the doctors who know what a broad gland is and
are cringing at my description of it. And he has
(31:15):
a big surgery, goes through chemo and radiation therapy, it
comes back as metastatic, and in July of twenty twenty
two he passes away.
Speaker 6 (31:30):
And you know, there is some form of relief.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
I would say, with it, because you don't want to
see this person that you love suffer for so long,
and you know it's just it's over. It's sun and
you are all of a sudden looking at you know,
your life after this thing has happened.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
And how old was he?
Speaker 6 (31:51):
So he was thirty seven.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
And I know that there are a lot of people
who did not know just how sick he was.
Speaker 6 (31:57):
He wanted to keep very private about it.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
So I know that next day is some news is
going to get out and there are gonna be some questions.
And frankly, I again, I live in a two bedroom apartment.
I work a lot from home. I just didn't really
want to be home that day.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Yeah, setting by yourself.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Well, and you know it was late July and New
York City, so it's the middle of summer. People are out, warm,
beautiful day, and I don't want to be sulking inside
my apartment. But I don't want to be anywhere else either.
I just don't want to be inside. Being inside felt
too restrictive. Yeah, And so I'd gotten the rocking backpack
(32:40):
through you. And I love walking around the city. I
love putting in music in my headphones and walking on
any day, I should add, And so I just get moving.
I just throw on the backpack and I get moving.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Where did you leave from your apartment.
Speaker 6 (32:56):
My apartment's in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
No direction of mind, no mileage, no just just I'm
gonna walk.
Speaker 6 (33:02):
Yeah, I'm gonna walk.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
I think sometime I was headed towards the Williamsburg Bridge
because I wanted to be I love going by the water.
And at a certain point, I'm going over the Williamsburg Bridge,
and I think to myself, you know what I've never done.
I've lived in New York for seventeen years, and I've
never walked over the Manhattan Bridge. And so you know
what I'm gonna do today. I'm gonna walk over the
(33:24):
Manhattan Bridge. And if only as a small reminder to
myself that even after this terrible thing happened, that there's
still new things I can do, new horizons to reach across, literally,
(33:45):
new bridges to cross.
Speaker 6 (33:47):
Yeah, and that there is more that is new and
wonderful ahead of this.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
And again, I like, I wasn't in this despondently sad place.
I actually believed that I was relatively well adjusted the occasion.
I was going to therapy, I speaking with my friends
about it. But I when something shitty happens, you want
(34:14):
to derive meaning from it, sure, or just make it
less shitty, somehow ameliorate that shittiness.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Well, I think that's that reminds me of this research
on how we frame events. So there's this idea of
what story are you going to tell yourself about this
bad thing that happened, this thing that just got thrown
in your life. It wasn't good. And there's two ways
(34:44):
that people frame things. There's what's called contamination stories, that
is to say, this bad thing happened, it's contaminating my life.
Everything is going to be bad thereafter. Or there's redemptive stories,
or this bad thing happened, but did I learn something
from it? And can I at least see a lesson
and a path out of it where I could end
(35:08):
up better off or at least not broken by it.
And so to me, it sounds like you were almost
thinking that with the bridge metaphor.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Yeah, I mean I would say it was both of those, right,
It was both of those.
Speaker 6 (35:21):
Kinds of stories.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
This thing happened to me, and also I'm going to
make something of it. And I should say to anybody
listening to this, who thanks God, that kind of mentality
is amazing. I am not typically this person. I take
stuff on the chin pretty hard, and my mental and
emotional resilience is something that I still have to work on.
Speaker 6 (35:46):
To this day.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
If the people closest to me would say, I probably
get too affected by things. And also to that point
about the way we tell ourselves stories. I mean, Michael,
you're a journal list, You've worked in stories, you've written books.
Speaker 6 (36:02):
You know me, and the way I relate to the
world is through story.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
Yeah, as you said that, I thought to myself, Yeah,
that it does feel like the way we frame our
life does break down into those two categories, both at
the same time. But you mentioned you were going through both.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
So were you going through mentally or are you going
through kind of swings along all these steps.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Well, it was just like this, it was like, this
thing happened to me and I don't know what to
do with it. Yeah, right, and I'm angry. I wanted
the world to stop for me and to mourn with me. Yeah,
and I was angry that it didn't.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
Yeah, you're in the city. That place is never stopping.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
Right, And then you know the cliche, it always happens
to the best ones. Yeah, it's like, why did this
happen to him and not? And here I pull out
my scroll of all the people who, all the villains
of this world who deserve what he got, Why.
Speaker 6 (37:04):
Did it happen to them?
Speaker 3 (37:06):
You know, your typical existential wonderings when faced with something
like that. And I think the reflective desire be it
out of some kind of guilt or some feeling of
obligation and duty to the person who had involved to
do something with it, rather than just be a schmuck
(37:29):
for whom something happens to and then they go on
with their lives. And also I should say, it occurs
to me that it was a way of keeping him
close to me in that moment, as many things still are,
which is kind of I find how morning works in
a way is so much of the way we express
(37:52):
pain is trying to keep that pain close to us,
because it's scary to go forward in life without this
thing that you've come to know so much, whether it's
a person and their love or the pain of losing them,
it is scary to move forward without those things.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah, I feel like for me, walking can sort of
serve as a metaphor that you do move forward, and
they'll be swings along the way where it sucks you
feel like hell, you'll also have highs and lows, and
that's kind of just like this metaphor for life. But
you're still moving forward in that direction, you know.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
Right Cutting back to that day, that fateful day, I've
got the backpack on, I'm a crossing the Weddingsburg Bridge
and I'm going, I can't believe I've never walked across
the Manhattan Bridge. So today I'm going to do something different.
I'm going to walk across the Manhattan Bridge and the
Manhattan Bridge.
Speaker 6 (38:54):
As far as bridges in.
Speaker 3 (38:56):
New York go, it's not all that iconic between the
Williamsburg and the Brooklyn Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge being the
most iconic one, the Williamsburg Bridge having arguably the best
walking and bicycling path, and the Manhattan Bridge is a
little less value hooed. I should say it's a mid
level bridge. It's a very like, well, I have a
(39:17):
view on this, Okay, let's hear it. I'm starting to
walk across the bridge and I was expecting the absolute worst,
which I would experience later that day. But I'm walking
across this bridge and I'm going, oh my god, you
know what I'm realizing about this bridge. I believe it
is the highest of all of the bridge heights in
New York. But at the very least you are looking
(39:40):
over the Brooklyn Bridge. So it is the best view
you're going to get, arguably, of the Brooklyn Bridge out
into New York Harbor.
Speaker 6 (39:48):
It's a beautiful view.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
The walking path is very small, the bic clean path
very small, but it's a beautiful view of the harbor.
And so I'm standing in the middle of the bridge
looking at the view, going damn, this is nice, and
I'm so glad I did this. But you know what,
I've also never done, never walked across the Queensboro Bridge.
And I say to myself, well, I don't have that
(40:10):
much work to do today. I mean, I told my
coworkers that we had somebody was out, so I had
to answer a couple calls or something. But it's like,
I can spend the day doing this. I got enough
battery on my phone and listen to music. I'm not
that tired yet. What if I crossed all four of
the major bridges, the Walliensburg Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge, the
(40:33):
Brooklyn Bridge, and the Queensboro Bridge in one day?
Speaker 6 (40:35):
Can I do it?
Speaker 3 (40:36):
And I was, you know, I at that point was
a couple hours in and it did not feel all
that difficult to me. And so off I go across
the Manhattan Bridge into a neighborhood called Dumbo, which is
an acronym that stands for down under Manhattan Bridge Overpass,
(40:57):
and I start walking to the Brooklyn Bridge. And I
get on the Brooklyn Bridge and I cross the Brooklyn Bridge,
which is no matter what time of year, it is
virtually always touristy and insane and ridiculous.
Speaker 6 (41:11):
You know, if the.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
Williamsburg Bridge is like lovely in Assyrian Walk and the
Manhattan Bridge is just a tighter walk, a little bit
more rough around the edges, but still pretty calm, the
Brooklyn Bridge is always just teeming with people, you know,
TikTokers and people selling stuff. And it's a different slice
in New York. And I think, well, I want to
(41:32):
stay by the water. This was one of my mistakes
or not, depending on how you see it. So I
go Doe east on Manhattan and I walk up the
side of Manhattan near the water. And this is the
longest part of the walk, because now I'm at the
bomb of Manhattan. So I'm going under the Manhattan Bridge
under the Williamsburg Bridge all the way up to fifty
(41:54):
seventh Street, and I don't know how many blocks it
is exactly from City Hall to fifty seventh Street where
the Queensboro bridges.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
That's got to be only six miles.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
Let's see, I'm doing the numbers right now. It says
walking from the Brooklyn Bridge to the Queensboro Bridge, it's
approximately five point five to six miles. This route generally
falls a path along the East River, such as the
Second Avenue or East with River Greenway. So I definitely
took the longest version of that, which was six miles. Okay,
(42:25):
And it is now midday and the sun is beating
down on me. I'm starting to feel it summer humid,
middle of the summer, and I've got this backpack on
my back.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
Yeah, twounds something like that.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
So now I'm stopping at a park or two to
take a sit. I get up to the Queensboro Bridge,
which I have again never crossed doing something new. I
cannot in good faith recommend walking across the Queensboro Bridge
because the walking and biking biking paths are one and
the same. You're at level with the cars, so you're
(42:58):
basically just a huff and smog, and when it drops
you off, it drops you off in the middle of Queens. Now,
if you are a touristing New York and you tell
me you're going to this part of New York, I'm
probably convinced that you're either lost or you've done something
terribly wrong in your trip planning.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
I walk off the Queensboro Bridge and now I'm in
Long Island City. Long Island City was actually the first
neighborhood I moved to in New York, and I moved
there with Henry in two thousand and five. We shared
a It was a one bedroom apartment. The girl who
lived there took the bedroom. We were sleeping on mattresses
(43:38):
on the floor of the living room.
Speaker 6 (43:40):
Awesome.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
How far did you end up walking the entire day?
Speaker 3 (43:43):
Well, once I got to Queens I was like, all right,
home stretch. Yeah, So I walked over the Pulawski Bridge
that connects Long Island City to Greenpoint. That's about forty
five minutes from my place. And I got there and
I said, well, you're already here, you might as well
do the full lap. I instead chose to walk south
(44:04):
along the Green Point in Williamsburg Waterfront all the way
back to the base of the Williamsburg Bridge and then
walk home, which is about twenty minutes for my place.
So as opposed to walking forty minutes from Greenpoint back
to my place, I threw on another forty minutes plus
the twenty it takes to get from Williamsburg back to mine,
(44:28):
and at that point it was about twenty five or
twenty four miles.
Speaker 6 (44:34):
Then I get home.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
I take the bag off. Holy shit, I've never felt
anything like that felt wait, it was, well, just immediately
I knew that. Typically for anybody who's used a rucking backpack,
you know the feeling of you take off the bag.
You feel a sense of like relief and lighter. It's
like when you're done doing a heavy set of lifting weights.
(44:59):
Your arms feel a little bit more nimble and area
and like they can move through air a little bit
more quickly. Same thing when you take off a rocking
backpack after like a normal ruck I take off the
rocking backpack.
Speaker 6 (45:09):
I do not feel that. I just feel sore.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
Yeah, like what have I done? I love the moment
where you.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
Go.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
I've never crossed all the bridges. What if I gave
it a shot like that insight. I wonder where that
came from. Where you're kind of doing something that's you know,
you're pushing your edge a little bit and you just go, yeah,
but how much farther can I take this thing? That's
the best. I've had a few of those moments in
my life where I'm out doing something you just go,
(45:43):
what if I just keep going, Let's see what happens.
And it's like you go into this unexplored zone where
you're going to test this thing and see what you
maybe learn from it along the way. And I personally
have found it's great for ideas, it's great for just
kind of thinking. I mean especially and I haven't done
it after something that significant of my life happened, like
(46:07):
the loss of a friend or something. But I can
say I gain a lot of insights from good example,
when I did this crazy long hike in you saw
It last year, I came to like the center of
my life and what I want to do with it
and how I'm spending my time. And that would not
have happened if I were to just take an hour
(46:27):
long walk around my house. It's like I had to
really get out and get the time under my feet
and let my mind just wander and go places, and
it found where it needed to go, and I learned
some things.
Speaker 3 (46:38):
I wish those moments would happen more in my life totally.
It was so inadvertent, and it was born out of
it was born out of I literally don't want to
be in the house anymore. Yeah, And it was a
variation on the line you don't have to go home,
but you can't stay here. I didn't want to go home.
I didn't want to stay where I was. And so
(46:59):
is truly this moment of like what if I just
do this? And you saying that that's really interesting? Like
how often in life do we want to break out
of the pattern and the thing that we're doing to
get somewhere else. I wish I could come across those
moments every day. I wish I could break my routines
(47:21):
with the moxie of wanting to change shit up and
the impetus to just try something and then go with
it totally. And here I should mention that I did
it a second year. And what I'm going to do
is I'm going to walk across different bridges, so I
(47:42):
load up the backpack, I fill it with a couple
frozen bottles of ice water. It is even hotter this
day than it was the year before. It is scorching.
The bridges I end up crossing are mostly in Brooklyn
and Queens Yeah, And the only public transport I took
during this day was until I got to my final destination,
(48:06):
the tram that takes you from Roosevelt Island down to
the Queensboro Bridge.
Speaker 6 (48:10):
I walk.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
And also, I'd never been on Roosevelt Island at this point,
lived in New York for you know, nineteen years, eighteen
years at this point, never been on Roosevelt Island, never
been on any of these bridges either. There's a reason
for that. So I take the tram, I walk across
Central Park.
Speaker 6 (48:27):
I walk across the Bow Bridge, which goes over.
Speaker 3 (48:29):
The pond in Central Park. It is, fun fact, the
shortest pedestrian bridge in New York City and one of
the oldest. And then I decide, here's what I'm gonna do.
I'm going to walk all the way up to the
George Washington Bridge from what fifty seventh Street in Central Park.
I walk all the way to the top of Central Park.
Never done that fifty eighth Street, or at the wherever
(48:53):
I was at the top of Central Park, whatever block
that is one hundred and tenth Street. Maybe it's where
you start tripping over needles in the park. You're you're
on the west side, climbing up through Harlem. It is hot.
I was walking into Bodega's looking like oh, and I
also had my camera with me and added a couple
(49:14):
of pounds. I mean, I was soaked in sweat, caked
in dirt. I looked like I was trying to give
myself dehydration and what is it, rabbo dialosis or whatever
whatever the condition is where your muscles start breaking down
and poisoning your body. For sure, rabo. Yeah, looked like
(49:37):
I was trying to give myself that.
Speaker 1 (49:39):
I will say. The nice thing about walking around New
York is plenty of resources. You know, if you're not
doing it in the wilderness, you're like shit, I ran
out of water, I ran out of food. What am
I going to do?
Speaker 6 (49:48):
There's a bodega right there.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
There's a bodega right there. He's got everything you could
ever need.
Speaker 6 (49:51):
That's that is correct.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
And and so I get all the way up to
the George Washington Bridge, which is well at the top
of Manhattan. The George Washington Bridge connects New Jersey to Manhattan.
And I get up to it and I am, I'm
just cooked. And I walk across the George Washington Bridge,
(50:15):
which is, as far as bridges go, probably the most
like epic and insane bridge of them all. Traffics going
right by you. You are very high up. You're looking
up the Hudson River to the Hudson Valley down at
the rest of Manhattan. It's pretty epic, but it's also
you're walking to New Jersey. And so I get to
(50:36):
the line in the sidewalk that says New York and
then there's a line that says New Jersey and I
look at it and I say, fuck this. No I
believe I said to myself, fuck New Jersey. And I
turn around start walking back, and I get about fifty
feet and I go, if you don't cross this bridge
(50:59):
and get all the way of the New the New
Jersey side and back, this will haunt you for the rest.
Speaker 6 (51:03):
Of your life.
Speaker 1 (51:04):
Gotta finish, gotta finish.
Speaker 3 (51:07):
So I truck it, go all the way over to the
New Jersey side, look at it.
Speaker 1 (51:12):
Experience a little bit of New Jersey trauma. If you're
going to go up to the edge of the wasteland,
you just gotta get in take a peek.
Speaker 6 (51:19):
Listen.
Speaker 3 (51:19):
I put a foot in that was more than enough.
And then I turned around and hiked back. And then
I got on the A train and took it all
the way down to fourteenth Street, got on the L
took it back to my place. And if I was
sore the year before this time, I.
Speaker 6 (51:34):
Was cooked cooked.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
I mean I must have been sore for three days
after I it was. It went from being an enjoyable, fun,
ritual discovery to this moby dick like hunt for new
experiences that cost me body, mind, and soul.
Speaker 1 (51:57):
So what did you learn in totality from this? Because
we set this up by you're not a person who
would normally do this. Something prompted this that wasn't what
you would hope for.
Speaker 6 (52:12):
I mean, listen, I am.
Speaker 3 (52:14):
I am, like many of your adherents, deranged enough to
put on a backpack full of weight for the sake of.
Speaker 1 (52:19):
Doing so heavy, for the syc of being heavy.
Speaker 3 (52:22):
I learned exactly the thing that I set out to,
which was the new things are possible, and I would
do well to internalize that. I think, if anything, I've
failed to capitalize on that, maybe as much as I
should or would have liked to. No, certainly as much
as I should or would have liked to because and
(52:44):
I already feel the cliche spilling out of me. But
you don't really know what you're capable of until you
try it. And it doesn't actually take that much to
show you that or to demonstrate that. Literally, for me,
it was just putting one foot in front of another
(53:05):
and I did.
Speaker 6 (53:07):
I did, and it was wonderful. And I don't want.
Speaker 3 (53:12):
To be prescriptive about this, but I think it would
be a comment upon me to find more opportunities to
do that. And I don't you know, it's it's like
they say at financial firms, past performance does not indicate
future results. So I don't want to make this promise
to anybody, but I don't think most people are going
(53:33):
to be the lesser for.
Speaker 1 (53:34):
It has just been talking and kind of telling this
larger story. There was a guy who helped me get sober,
like the most influential person in that journey, and he
got diagnosed with stage four colon cancer, similar to you,
he goes. I was in the house. I didn't want
(53:54):
to be in the house. I didn't really want to
be anywhere else though, So I just went outside, took
a walk, ended up taking a long walk, and he
goes somewhere along that walk. I became okay with it.
It is what it is. And he returned home with
this totally different outlook. Now that dude knew we had
(54:17):
stage four colon cancer once he started helping me. I
didn't know he had that until i'd met known him
for like three months. And I think back to that
all the time, just the selflessness behind that, and also
where that comes from. And I do think sometimes you
(54:38):
need to go do something that allows you to process
and reframe things. Yeah, and I think if you look
at the grand history of humanity, walking has always been
one of those things. Why do people go on pilgrimage?
Why do things happen mentally? You go on a walk
and it appears as a physical act. It's not. It
(54:59):
is a physical act, but it's more a mental exploration
in a way.
Speaker 3 (55:04):
I dare anybody listen to this, who visits New York
City or Paris or London to go and put twenty
thousand steps in near the center of those cities.
Speaker 6 (55:17):
Don't retrace any of them. Just twenty thousand.
Speaker 3 (55:19):
They'll take you, by my account, you know, not two
hundred minutes, give or take so three hours. Your life
will improve dramatically that I will guarantee, absent some tragedy
or active God, there is just nothing like going for
a good walk.
Speaker 6 (55:38):
There really isn't.
Speaker 1 (55:39):
Feels like a perfect note to end on Foster, Thanks
for coming on, man.
Speaker 3 (55:44):
Man my pleasure. What a joy, What a joy.
Speaker 1 (55:51):
All right, let's wrap things up, let's land the plane.
So we have just talked to two people who are
talking about really extreme forms of walking. On one hand,
we have this ridiculous Stephen King murderous scenario where these
boys have to walk very far, and yes, it shows
us that the human body is capable of walking extreme
distances if we need to. On the other hand, we
(56:12):
have Foster, who without any training, ended up rocking more
than a marathon across New York City. These are unbelievable,
inspiring forms of walking, but at the same time raises
a question, how many steps should you be getting day
to day? I'm talking about in the trenches of daily life,
where you're not taking on these giant challenges where you're
just like, how many steps do I need in order
(56:35):
to be healthy? Now here's what I'll say. You've probably
heard the numbers ten thousand. Turns out that's a myth.
So it was started by a Japanese pedometer manufacturer who
named their pedometer the man Poquet, and that translates to
the ten thousand steps meter. That number stuck. There's a
couple reasons for that. One, it's five figures rather than four. Two,
(56:59):
it's very memorable, it's nice and round, and three it's
enough walking that you actually have to get out and
take a walk in order to hit it. So that
number just sort of stuck. That's what everyone thought, Oh,
that is the optimal number of steps a day. But
then something happened. Scientists started digging into the data and
they found that ten thousand steps isn't really the optimal number.
So there are two ways to look at this. First,
(57:22):
there is a daily step count that is sort of
the bare minimum that you should get for health, and
the second is sort of an optimal number.
Speaker 6 (57:29):
It's higher.
Speaker 1 (57:30):
It gives you the greatest return on your health. At
the same time, it's quite a few steps. So the
first number, if you just want to hit the bare
minimum of health benefits, and this is backed by a
study in a Lancet. Plenty of other studies have looked
into this. Researchers generally fine that seven thousand steps a
day is an ideal number that lets you sort of
(57:51):
maximize your health benefits in the minimum amount of time possible.
So if you're pressed for time, your goal should be
seven thousand a day. That helps you ward off most diseases.
It reduces your risk of dying early. That is a
great number. That said, more is better, So if you
dive deeper into that data, the studies find that twelve
(58:13):
thousand steps a day allows you to absolutely maximize your
health benefits. And the catch is doing more than twelve thousand,
it doesn't seem to reduce your risk of disease any further.
It doesn't give you any more. Now that said, the
benefits of going from seven thousand to twelve thousand steps
a day, we're just a little bit better. It's not
(58:34):
like a crazy difference. So again seven thousand, if you
want to hit the bare minimum, twelve thousand will get
you a little more benefits. Of course, it's going to
take a lot more time and then the inevitable question
is okay, great, now that I know the real numbers,
how do I actually get that amount of steps let's
say seven thousand. Here's my advice. I think you should
(58:56):
look for ways that you can add walking into things
that you already have to do. One of my favorite
stories about this comes from this woman who reads my
two percent substack. Her name was Mary. She had a
desk job where she would take phone calls all day.
She was only getting two to three thousand steps a day.
What she did is she realized, oh, I do have
(59:16):
to take all these phone calls for work, but I
do not have to take them sitting. So she started
popping in headphones and taking her calls while walking, and
she was able to get well past seven thousand steps
a day. Nothing in her life changed except she started
taking those phone calls while walking. So the takeaway look
for easy ways to add more walking in your life.
(59:36):
As for me, and I may sound like a complete
and utter psychopath for saying this, I get about fourteen
thousand steps a day at the same time I'm not
necessarily trying to. Instead, I happen to have an absolutely
insane hunting dog named Duke. And if he doesn't get
the steps in, he is just going to go find
a mission in my house and it typically involves, i
(59:58):
don't know, pulling down a computer monitor or a coffee maker,
so he really incentivizes me to get in all those steps.
That is our show for today. Thanks for checking it out,
and thank you to Foster and Melissa for talking to
us about the power of walking. Do not forget to subscribe,
and if you have a question, please put it in
(01:00:18):
the comments or send us an email and we will
try and answer as many questions as possible. And if
you want bonus points, send us that question in a
voice memo or in video format and we will have that.
We would absolutely love that. As always, in closing, have fun,
don't die.
Welcome to two Percent. I'm your host, Michael Easter, and
I am thrilled to announce that this is the very
first episode of my new podcast. Now, if you have
not heard of me, you may have seen me on
other podcasts like The Joe Rogan Experience, like Andrew Huberman,
or maybe on TV like CBS Saturday Morning or Good
Morning America. Either way, here's my background. I am a
(00:44):
journalist who has been investigating human health and well being
for about twenty years now. I was an editor at
Men's Health for a long time, worked at other magazines
like Scientific American like GQ. Then I became a professor
for seven years, and in that process I started writing books.
So I ended up writing a book called The Comfort
Crisis and Scarcity Brain. They became bestsellers. They changed a
(01:07):
lot of people and their habits. My work has taken
me to places like conflict zones, to the Bolivian jungle,
to labs at Harvard to neuroscience labs all over the map,
and all these experiences have taught me one thing, and
that's that improving your life it isn't always easy. It
typically comes through embracing discomfort, taking on challenges, big and
small across the days, weeks, months, and years of your
(01:29):
life and leaning into what is hard. That is how
people learn doing hard things. We're going to have long,
in depth, fascinating conversations with some of the world's greatest
thinkers in all different areas. Each person will teach us
something about what it means to live a good life
right now, and it'll all be actionable. And you might
(01:50):
be wondering, why is this called two percent? Two That
is the percent of people who take the stairs when
there is also an escalator available, only two percent. Now,
I would argue every single one of those people knew
that taking the stairs would be better for them, be
better for their physical health, it would be better for
(02:11):
their mental health. Get the vast majority of people, they
choose to do the easy, more effortless thing that not
only is not going to help them in the long run,
but that might actually harm them in the long run.
So we're going to look at how do we find
challenges big and small can be as simple as the
staircase that can improve our lives in the long run,
And how do we actually build the sort of online
(02:32):
mental networks to make taking the harder path an easier
decision to make. Now, what is our first episode? That
is a very important one. It's like, how are you
going to open this thing? Today's episode focuses on one
of the most fundamental things that a human being can do,
and a thing that we no longer do quite as much,
and it is absolutely hurting our well being. We're gonna
(02:55):
be talking about walking. So for some context here, walking
absolutely shape humans into who we are and allowed us
to take over the world. It is our most fundamental act.
We used to walk about twenty thousand steps a day,
and the average person today only takes about four thousand steps. Now,
I've been thinking about this because a year ago today,
(03:18):
I was in the middle of the Utah Desert on
an eight hundred and fifty mile hike across southern Utah.
So what we'd have to do is we'd have to
navigate through the desert find our way. This is considered
the hardest route in the world. We'd have to navigate
down canyons, we would have to find water in this
scorching hot landscape. And I learned so much about myself
(03:42):
and what the human body is capable of through that hike.
We were hiking like twenty five miles a day. It
was one of the greatest adventures I've ever been on
in my life. And so with this anniversary of the hike,
thinking about walking, I wanted to know what is the
human body really capable of walking? Because I surely hadn't
been walking twenty five miles a day before I did
(04:03):
this hike, But then I put myself in that situation,
and all of a sudden I was able to go
severely long distances every single day in a harsh landscape.
So to answer that question, we are bringing in an
evolutionary geneticist named Melissa Alardo. She studies some of the
world's most amazing populations on Earth and really understands what
(04:24):
we are all capable of, no matter who you are.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
The fact that it's like a big achievement to get
ten thousand steps in a day, you know, like that's
something we're rewarding ourselves for when for most of human
history that was probably very standard, if not kind of
below average.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
After that, we're going to bring on one of my
dearest friends who wasn't a big walker, not a real
athletic guy, but one day he left his house in
New York and he started walking and he didn't stop
for a really, really long time. So we're going to
learn what he learned in that journey and what it
can tell us about taking on challenges that are often unexpected.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
How often in life do we want to break out
of the pattern and the thing that we're doing to
get somewhere else. I wish I could come across those
moments every day. I wish I could break my routines
with the moxie of wanting to change sit up and
(05:23):
the impetus to just try something and then go with it.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
And then finally, at the very end, we're going to
cover what the science really says about how many steps
you should take a day, so you know exactly how
much you should be walking, even if you don't want
to take on an epic walk like I did. And
I will give you a hint. No, it is not
ten thousand. So let's get into it. Okay, So story time,
(05:47):
I was just on a fourteen hour flight back from Europe. Now,
I spent about ten hours of that flight writing, researching,
reading nerdy studies. But then eventually my brain it just
had enough, so I turned on a movie. I turned
on a movie called The Long Walk. Now, It is
based on a Stephen King novel, and in full Stephen
(06:09):
King fashion, it has got the most insane murderous plot
line of all time. Here's what happens in the movies.
A bunch of boys. They're rounded up in this post
apocalyptic world and then they are asked to walk as
far as they possibly can without stopping. So I'm gonna
play you a little preview of how this plays out
and what the rules for this are.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
I'm not gonna go through the whole rule book, but
it boils down to this. When you fall below the
speed of three miles per hour, you get your ticket
walk until there's only one of you left.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Now.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
When I first turned on this movie and heard the rules,
I thought you took a bunch of untrained teenage These
people have not been preparing for this walk physically. I
don't know. I bet they'll get twenty thirty forty miles. No, literally,
all of the boys make it at least one hundred miles,
and the one who wins another spoiler alert makes it
more than three hundred miles. So I wanted to know
(07:17):
is this actually possible? These kids have no training. They
also only have resources from a canteen and a couple sandwiches.
Could a human being actually walk that far without stopping?
So to answer this question, we have Melissa Alardo, who
literally studies extreme physical acts, and she has unbelievable answers
(07:37):
to all the questions I had about this insane movie.
Thanks for being here.
Speaker 5 (07:43):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
You have done a lot of endurance stuff. Have you
done ultra runs? I know you do crazy backcountry ski touring.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
I do long backcountry ski tours. I didn't iron Man.
I actually was training for a fifty mile ultra and
I had some knee problems, so I haven't. I haven't
done an ultra yet, but I'm around runners and I yeah,
I love endurance sports.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
So a lot of the boys end up going past
one hundred miles. The one who wins, I think goes
more than three hundred and fifty miles. Big question is
how realistic do you think this is? Because the key,
of course, is that you cannot drop below three miles
an hour. If you stop, you basically get shot. Do
you think it's physically possible for a person to walk
(08:29):
NonStop three miles an hour for that long.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
I do think it's possible. I think you know, obviously
it's extraordinary circumstances.
Speaker 5 (08:35):
In the movie. So, I mean, there are a lot.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Of people, obviously, people who mostly train, who do ultramarathons.
What's incredible about the human body is that if you
keep the effort low enough, you know, we're really well
adapted in general to endurance. So yeah, with some training
a really steady pace. Obviously there are certain things that
they're having to take care of while they're walking that
seem a little bit challenging, but yeah, I think it's possible.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
So why are we so well adapted to endurance?
Speaker 5 (09:03):
There are some theories about this.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Some of it is centers around the fact that we
may have traditionally practiced a form of hunting where our
endurance became an advantage. And there are groups of people
around the world, some of whom I work with, who
continue to practice this kind of hunting. It's called persistence hunting.
We're essentially, you know, we're good at endurance, or we
evolve this endurance feet because when we pursue animals for
(09:29):
long enough, if we can last longer than they do,
they become very easy to hunt. So some people think
that that is the reason that we're so good at
long distance endurance kind of efforts.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
And part of that is because we are really efficient
at cooling ourselves, right, and other animals are not. So
if you just run them down far enough, they'll eventually overheat,
and meanwhile, we're sweating, we're not super hot, and so
we can just keep going and eventually there are dinner
more or less.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Yeah, exactly, And then some of these communities will populate,
will practice this at the hottest part of the day
to in particular, you know, really drive animals into this
point of exhaustion faster.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Okay, so what do you think the biggest hurdles that
these boys would have faced would be.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
There's a number of things, you know, as interesting as
they were thinking about what they were eating, you know,
so there's some comments on what they were eating, what
they were being given to eat. At that energy level,
at that amount of effort, your body's primarily burning fat,
and there are actually ways that you can, you know,
change your diet or your training to push yourself to
burn even more fat at that pace. So you know,
(10:38):
if you're consuming fat, then you're able to last a
lot longer. But if you're consuming you know, like one
of the people is eating, you know, venison, which is
very low in fat, very low in carbohydrates. Your body
has no fuel and so as soon as the glycogen
your muscles is depleted. You know, if you do push
into that point where you're burning carbohydrates, you're you're in trouble,
you know. And that hill gets steep and all of
(11:00):
a sudden their heart rates spikes. They're going to be
They're going to be done.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
For Another thing that I'd noticed too, is because they
didn't name a year in the movie, but I'm assuming
this is the way it's filmed and what people are wearing.
I'm assuming this is post World War two, and so
a lot of the boys are wearing these like work
boots effectively. And I saw that, and I'm just thinking,
(11:23):
oh my god, your feet would be destroyed after fifteen miles,
much less one hundred and fifty. I feel like that
would be a giant limitter.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Oh absolutely, especially once it starts raining and you have
humidity introduced into it. And oh yeah, I was not
then being their footwear.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Before we hit record, we were talking a little bit
about sleep and I had gone into this thinking, I
feel like at hour thirty six, you would start to
just go totally crazy. But you brought up some interesting
points about how the amount of sleep people need differs
and how a person who needs less sleep might actually
(12:02):
be an advantage. So tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Yeah, so there's a rare familial mutation that causes people
to not need as much sleep. So it's these they
call them natural short sleepers, and they sleep generally four
to six hours a night with no ill effects, so
no cognitive effects from that, no, seemingly no health effects.
It actually seems like maybe they live longer. And they've
done some studies kind of replicating this genetic advantage in mice,
(12:30):
and the mice also seems to be very healthy. So yeah,
someone like that would certainly do much better because while
they're going into a sleep.
Speaker 5 (12:37):
Debt, it's certainly not as much of a debt.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
And yeah, that was the one thing I was a
little surprised was they didn't show anyone hallucinating, because surely,
after that long I would imagine you'd be hallucinating pretty hard.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Yeah. Absolutely, A question about those people who need less sleep,
how do we know who they are? If there's a
person out there who goes, oh yeah, I usually sleep
five hours a night. Everyone tells me I need it,
but I feel fine. Is that a way to know?
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Yeah, there's some ongoing studies too to identify exactly that.
You know, there's this one family in which they found
this mutation, and everybody in this family seemed to do
fine with four to six hours of sleep, and so
they know what gene it's acting on, and it seems
like different people may carry different mutations in that gene,
and there may be other genes also that influence how
much sleep we need, because you know, anecdotally, some people
(13:23):
seem to be fine on seven eight hours, some people
need nine to ten. But yeah, I wish I were
one of these lucky people who only needed four to six,
because that's a lot more hours of the.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Day that you have. Totally. One thing I thought was
interesting too, is I don't think any of these people
competing had actually trained for this. I mean, there's kind
of this random sampling of there's a boy from every state.
Howbout the fact that they haven't trained at all factor
into this. And I will note that the boy who won,
(13:54):
he has this line where he says something like, oh,
I've been walking all my life, like this is my
life and he's the one who So how do you
think that would affect things?
Speaker 6 (14:02):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Yeah, I think you know, a lifetime of training in
whatever that looks like would absolutely give you an advantage.
So you know, I mean, I know he was saying
it kind of more metaphorically, but there are communities, like
some of the communities that I work with, they live
in really remote areas, you know, to get around.
Speaker 5 (14:19):
They're very mobile groups of people. They're just walking all
the time. They're walking up steep hills, they're walking you know,
many many miles every day through canyons, and so that's
a form of training in itself. But yeah, otherwise I think,
you know, straight off the couch trying to walk three
hundred and fifty miles would be pretty challenging. Your body
(14:39):
is just not ready to kind of switch into that
endurance mode as quickly if you're not training.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Ever, what I think is interesting, going back to what
we were talking about, how humans are adapted to endurance.
Probably for most of time, if you took a random
sampling of people, they would have been walking, i don't know,
ten fifteen miles a day, caring stuff. In normal life.
They would be much more ready to do something to
be thrown into this, and then today you take the
(15:07):
average person and it's like, yeah, not so much.
Speaker 6 (15:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
The fact that it's like a big achievement to get
ten thousand steps in a day, you know, like that's
something we're rewarding ourselves for when for most of human
history that was probably very standard, if not kind of
below average. Yeah, I think tells you something about the
current walking fitness of our population totally.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
There's a researcher who is now at USC named David Reichlan,
and he studied basically physical activity among the Hadza, and
I think the number he put on it as far
as average steps a day was something like twenty thousand
steps a day on average.
Speaker 5 (15:43):
Yeah, I believe it.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
So before we hit record, you made a really interesting
point and you said that women would likely perform better
in this context and the contest than men.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
So why is that There's this really interesting thing with
the length of races, with running and some other active
that we've seen where the longer the race is, the
more the gap between men and women closes, to the
point where when it's long enough, women actually often do better.
And so you know, when I think in a five
k it's like men on average perform ten percent better
(16:14):
than women. By the time you're getting to one hundred miles,
that gap has narrowed. By the time you're getting to
multi day races through deserts, women consistently perform better. Interestingly,
women also perform better in long distance swims, open water swims,
like very long distances. So there's you know, a temperature
regulation component to that. Somehow women seem to be better
(16:37):
at regulating temperature during these activities. But some of the
theories as to why women do better in these long
distances have to do with how women's bodies oxidize fat.
So how we you know, essentially use fat, which is,
like I said, the primary fuel when you're walking at
that kind of activity level. But then also, you know,
(16:57):
women have the capability being pregnant, and pregnancy is metabolically
the single hardest thing a human can do, so it's
someone calculated it's essentially the same as running a marathon
every day for the entirety of your pregnancy metabolically, so
it's you know, maybe that's what's driving women in these
very long efforts to perform better. But yeah, it would
(17:19):
have been interesting to see what happens if we throw
a few women in there.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
I came across a study where it measured effort in
high intensity interval classes, so basically you know, your CrossFit
type classes, and it found that women, when the coach
would say go your hardest, women would consistently go harder
than men, Like there was almost they were just more
willing to push into the sort of darkness of exercised
(17:45):
induced suffering than the men were, which I thought was fascinating.
Speaker 5 (17:48):
Yeah, and that.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Minds up the lines up with some things that I've
seen about women having in an exercise setting higher pain
tolerance than men. So in some settings it seems like
men have higher pain tolerance than women, but others it
seems that women very much have higher pain tolerance. So
maybe that's how they're able to kind of hang out
in that pain cave a little bit longer than men.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Totally. It's like when I get a blister on a walk,
it's the end of the world, and my wife just
you know, her sock is bloody and she just hasn't
even mentioned it. It's exactly that that man flu is real.
Absolutely so the competitor who ended up winning this thing
what I thought was interesting is that he had a
really sort of positive outlook the entire time he was
(18:29):
trying to keep everyone going. He was always, you know,
happy and smiling. How do you think mindset would factor
into a competition like this.
Speaker 5 (18:36):
Yeah, mindset would be huge.
Speaker 6 (18:38):
You know.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
I'm a geneticist, so a lot of times I think
about things in terms of genetics and genetic predisposition. But
at the end of the day, there have actually been
studies that show that what you are told about your
genes influences your ability more than your genes. So there
was a study where they told people that they were
predisposed to be low exercise or have low exercise capacity
(19:00):
or something like that, and within a very short time,
the way people exercise lived up to that expectation, despite
the fact that their genetics didn't actually line up with that.
So it seems like, you know, the other side of that,
of course, is that if you believe that you have
a really high capacity, if you believe you can win,
then you're probably a lot more likely to win. And
(19:20):
it's really interesting because it's really at the physiological, like
even the molecular level, our bodies respond to what our
brains are saying.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
That's fascinating. Does this sort of line up with the
central governor theory at all, which is basically saying that
your body sort of puts your brain puts a limit
on your physical output in order to sort of protect
yourself so you don't end up going so hard that
you injure yourself and burn out of fuel. Is it
in that lane or is that something totally different?
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Yeah, I mean I would imagine that seems like it
lines up really well, because yeah, normally it's protective to
not push yourself to the brink, but you know, if
you can switch that off. I mean, it's kind of like,
so I work a lot with divers who hold their
breath free diving. You know, our brains tell us we
need to breathe, not when we actually need to breathe,
but when carbon dioxide has built up. And that's also
(20:11):
protective because our body's saying like, uh, oh, you know,
time to breathe. But what really highly trained free divers
will do is they shut off that signal or they
ignore it. You know, they train themselves to ignore this
signal that's saying carbon dioxide is high, and then they
can hold their breath quite a bit longer, so it
becomes much more dangerous at that point, and that's why
(20:31):
sometimes people drown. But it does enable them to hold
their breath for an extraordinary.
Speaker 5 (20:35):
Amount of time.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
So a lot of it is kind of like a
smoke detector, whereas if the smoke detector is going off,
it's sensitive, right. We want the smoke detector to go
off when you burn a piece of toast when you're
cooking something and it ignites. Most times there's not an
actual fire, i e. Danger, but we want the smoke
detector sensitive, so the time that there is an actual fire,
(20:59):
you're going to react and make sure there's nothing wrong.
Is that kind of what we're talking about here.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Yeah, And you know a piece of that is that
we were also talking about before, is that when you're
driving yourself that hard, your body has to ignore other
parts of its physiology to put the effort into the endurance,
So things like your immune system are compromised.
Speaker 5 (21:19):
So a lot of people after long.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Endurance events like ultras will get sick because their immune
system just doesn't have you know, your body doesn't have
the energy to devote all of the resources to everything
that needs those resources.
Speaker 5 (21:31):
So we see a.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Character a competitor who becomes sick over the course of
the race and says, you know, I haven't been sick
in ten years, and it's like, well, yeah, that's not
a coincidence. You know, you're putting your body through the ringer.
It's putting all of its resources into walking, and that
has nothing left for the immune system.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Yeah. I did a long hike through southern Utah. I
was like eight hundred and fifty miles and when I
got back, I got sick within like a week. It
was just like immediately you're home, Okay, you're safe. Now
we're going to show you down and get sick.
Speaker 5 (22:01):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
In terms of what we were talking about with mindset,
have you experienced that when you do some of your
endurance stuff, like especially in the mountains in Utah? So
how you post it on Instagram the other day you
were hiking up a mountain. It looked cold, it looked
like it was at high elevation, and it looked hard.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Definitely, Yeah, And I think you know, I mean it
helps that I just love skiing so much, so it's
it's a lot. You know, I'm in it for that,
and that makes it easier to kind of push through.
But I mean, I'm, you know, in my office and
it's a few degrees cooler than it normally is, and
I'm freezing, but I'm out there and I'm able to
push through very cold temperatures. So it's like, yeah, all
(22:40):
of our we're very able to change our baselines, as
I know you talk about. So I have experienced that,
and it's amazing what you can do if you if
you decide to push through something.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Do you feel like that that there's almost a lesson
there for the average person where if you don't like
to exercise and you find it too hard, simply changing
the environment and finding something that you actually do love
can almost act as fuel to kind of get you
past the hump.
Speaker 5 (23:06):
Oh. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
I mean if you're not excited to get out there,
then you know, if you're tired, you're just not going
to do it, Whereas you know, I could be tired,
but right now it's snowing up in the mountains and
I'm really excited to go ski tomorrow because it's so
much fun, and so I think, yeah, whatever it is
that you can find that joy. Some days, if I'm
feeling really tired after work, I go to spin class,
(23:28):
which feels a little silly sometimes because it's kind of
like a you know, like a dance party on a bike,
but it's really fun, and so there are days where
that's my inspiration. So I think, yeah, finding joy in
whatever you do for exercise just makes it so much easier.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Totally. I've experienced that myself in terms of if I'm
on a treadmill, it's like it's so long, it's so boring,
the minutes go by so slow. But if I go
do a trail run, I'll look down and I've gone
six miles. I'm like, oh, I feel great, great, this
is I'm having a great time. If I was doing
(24:03):
six miles on a dreadmill a mile too, I'd be like,
we need to we need to stop this. This is awful.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (24:08):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
I was on the stairs in the gym the other
day and it was like twenty minutes in.
Speaker 5 (24:12):
I was like, oh, no, I can't do this.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
What do you think In real life most closely mimics
this competition, of course, without the possibility of being shot
at any given moment if you slow down.
Speaker 5 (24:24):
Well, as far as I know, there actually are.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Race is quite similar to this, where it's not so
much where they're making you maintain a specific speed, but
it's you know, last man's I think they're even called
last man Standing or something like that, and you essentially
have to go at a certain distance every hour or
whatever it is, and if you cover that, if you're
able to finish that distance in that time period, you
are still in the race. So and I think people
(24:49):
last quite a while in those I mean, of course
you have, you know, races where there's two hundred plus
miles that you're covering. But it is interesting, and they
mentioned this in the film too. The psychology of not
having a finish line is so different because it's not
that you have to make it somewhere, it's that you
have to outlast everyone else. So yeah, yeah, I can't
(25:09):
imagine what would be like to compete in something like that.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Absolutely. What do you think the sort of big practical
takeaways from this movie are for the average person as
it relates to endurance physiology mindset.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
I would say, get good shoes, don't wear boots when
you're going for one hundred mile, Like I think it's
you know.
Speaker 5 (25:35):
Training helps. All of these things are possible.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
I recently was actually in the Canadian in the mountains
in Canada backcountry skiing for a week with a woman
who was seventy one years old, and we were doing,
you know, fifty two hundred feet of a day and
she was doing that seven days in a row, and
it was just so amazing to me, you know, I mean,
she was keeping a good pace. It was it was
a steady you know, it wasn't a particularly fast pace.
(25:59):
But two interview today for seven days is really impressive
at seventy one. And so I think it's kind of
important to keep in mind that, you know, if you
if you train, if you keep at a good pace,
you're capable of a lot more than I think people
think they are.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Well, thanks for coming on, Melissa, We really appreciate it.
Speaker 5 (26:17):
Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Now. If you want to deeper dive into the science
of endurance, especially as applies to mindset, you can go
to twopct dot com and search exercise fatigue is an
emotion that goes down the rabbit hole, and it gives
you some actionable advice about how you can sort of
turn off or at least lessen that governor in your
brain that is screaming at you. To slow down and
(26:39):
quit when you probably have a lot more in the tank.
Something I'm going to start doing on the show is
bringing in ordinary people who have done something unbelievably physically
challenging and learned something from it. Some of these people
might be ultra marathoners, others might be everyday people who
just went out and started doing something physical and kept
(27:02):
pushing the boundaries and learn something in the process. And
there is no better person to start this idea out
than my good longtime friend Foster camer So. I first
met Foster when I was working in media in New
York City. We were both editors at different publications. We
would occasionally send each other stories to do. And he's
originally from Vegas, so when I moved to Vegas, anytime
(27:24):
we would come into town to meet with his family,
hang out, have holidays, we'd always meet up, hang out,
do something. Foster, you will learn though, is not necessarily
an athletic person. You know, he walks around a lot,
he does a few things, but he's definitely not a
physical specimen. And yet that said, one day he got
some bad news in his life. I'll let him explain that,
(27:47):
and it prompted him to leave his house with a
twenty five pound weight in a backpack on his back.
So he was rocking, and he started walking and each
time he would go to stop, he would keep walking,
keep walking, and it ended in one of the most
amazing physical acts I have ever heard of in my life.
So we're going to bring him on to talk about that,
(28:08):
not to mention he did this thing twice and he
learned so much from it in the process, about the
power of walking, about the power of getting outside what
is ordinary, and things about himself that really reframed what
he had gone through and the news that he received.
So with that all said, we're going to bring in Foster. Foster,
(28:30):
my favorite person from Las Vegas and friend.
Speaker 6 (28:33):
Oh, get out of here.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 6 (28:35):
Thank you, thank you for having me. Michael.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Here's where we need to start. For context. I would
not say that you are not athletic. I would also
not say that you are a David Goggins type. I
don't think you live by your whoop score.
Speaker 5 (28:52):
No.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
I do know that you occasionally, at least used to
enjoy a cigarette or two.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
Not for six years now, but yes, or eight years
eight years actually.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
You go see DJs that begin at the time that
I go to bed.
Speaker 6 (29:10):
Well after that, well after that, you.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Are active, I would say, like a lot of New Yorkers,
shit little.
Speaker 6 (29:19):
Walking inveterate walker. It's true.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Do you go to the gym sometimes?
Speaker 3 (29:24):
I belong to a rock climbing gym, which which was
not the cliche that it is now. A friend got
me into into a rock climbing bouldering about five six
years ago. I'm doing less of that these days, but
I do go to the gym. I did take a
weightlifting class last year. I would not call myself athletic,
(29:47):
though fair spry spry.
Speaker 6 (29:50):
Is going to be a word.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Yeah, But one fine day you do something that I
would classify as very athletic. I would say it put
you in David territory in the sense that you put
on a weighted backpack.
Speaker 6 (30:05):
How much was it twenty five pounds?
Speaker 3 (30:08):
And the first year I did it, I don't think
I actually had anything in it besides the way.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Yeah, So why did you take this walk in the
first place?
Speaker 3 (30:18):
So that same friend who got me into indoor rock
climbing was my best friend of twenty five years.
Speaker 6 (30:25):
His name is Henry. Henry Molina and you met at
summer camp.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
We met at summer camp when I was thirteen years old,
my first day of Sleepway Camp in Cleveland, Georgia Camp
Camp Coleman and yeah, we had an incredible friendship of
twenty five years. We lived together for a time. I mean,
we gotten all kinds of mischief together. When I first
moved to New York. We moved together right before I
(30:51):
turned twenty one. And so you know, he eventually moved
to la and his partner, Margaret, they moved there, and
in twenty twenty he's diagnosed with the squamous cell carcinoma
of the prodded gland, which is a cancer of the
gland behind your sweat land around there. Sorry to all
the doctors who know what a broad gland is and
are cringing at my description of it. And he has
(31:15):
a big surgery, goes through chemo and radiation therapy, it
comes back as metastatic, and in July of twenty twenty
two he passes away.
Speaker 6 (31:30):
And you know, there is some form of relief.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
I would say, with it, because you don't want to
see this person that you love suffer for so long,
and you know it's just it's over. It's sun and
you are all of a sudden looking at you know,
your life after this thing has happened.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
And how old was he?
Speaker 6 (31:51):
So he was thirty seven.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
And I know that there are a lot of people
who did not know just how sick he was.
Speaker 6 (31:57):
He wanted to keep very private about it.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
So I know that next day is some news is
going to get out and there are gonna be some questions.
And frankly, I again, I live in a two bedroom apartment.
I work a lot from home. I just didn't really
want to be home that day.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Yeah, setting by yourself.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Well, and you know it was late July and New
York City, so it's the middle of summer. People are out, warm,
beautiful day, and I don't want to be sulking inside
my apartment. But I don't want to be anywhere else either.
I just don't want to be inside. Being inside felt
too restrictive. Yeah, And so I'd gotten the rocking backpack
(32:40):
through you. And I love walking around the city. I
love putting in music in my headphones and walking on
any day, I should add, And so I just get moving.
I just throw on the backpack and I get moving.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Where did you leave from your apartment.
Speaker 6 (32:56):
My apartment's in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
No direction of mind, no mileage, no just just I'm
gonna walk.
Speaker 6 (33:02):
Yeah, I'm gonna walk.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
I think sometime I was headed towards the Williamsburg Bridge
because I wanted to be I love going by the water.
And at a certain point, I'm going over the Williamsburg Bridge,
and I think to myself, you know what I've never done.
I've lived in New York for seventeen years, and I've
never walked over the Manhattan Bridge. And so you know
what I'm gonna do today. I'm gonna walk over the
(33:24):
Manhattan Bridge. And if only as a small reminder to
myself that even after this terrible thing happened, that there's
still new things I can do, new horizons to reach across, literally,
(33:45):
new bridges to cross.
Speaker 6 (33:47):
Yeah, and that there is more that is new and
wonderful ahead of this.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
And again, I like, I wasn't in this despondently sad place.
I actually believed that I was relatively well adjusted the occasion.
I was going to therapy, I speaking with my friends
about it. But I when something shitty happens, you want
(34:14):
to derive meaning from it, sure, or just make it
less shitty, somehow ameliorate that shittiness.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Well, I think that's that reminds me of this research
on how we frame events. So there's this idea of
what story are you going to tell yourself about this
bad thing that happened, this thing that just got thrown
in your life. It wasn't good. And there's two ways
(34:44):
that people frame things. There's what's called contamination stories, that
is to say, this bad thing happened, it's contaminating my life.
Everything is going to be bad thereafter. Or there's redemptive stories,
or this bad thing happened, but did I learn something
from it? And can I at least see a lesson
and a path out of it where I could end
(35:08):
up better off or at least not broken by it.
And so to me, it sounds like you were almost
thinking that with the bridge metaphor.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Yeah, I mean I would say it was both of those, right,
It was both of those.
Speaker 6 (35:21):
Kinds of stories.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
This thing happened to me, and also I'm going to
make something of it. And I should say to anybody
listening to this, who thanks God, that kind of mentality
is amazing. I am not typically this person. I take
stuff on the chin pretty hard, and my mental and
emotional resilience is something that I still have to work on.
Speaker 6 (35:46):
To this day.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
If the people closest to me would say, I probably
get too affected by things. And also to that point
about the way we tell ourselves stories. I mean, Michael,
you're a journal list, You've worked in stories, you've written books.
Speaker 6 (36:02):
You know me, and the way I relate to the
world is through story.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
Yeah, as you said that, I thought to myself, Yeah,
that it does feel like the way we frame our
life does break down into those two categories, both at
the same time. But you mentioned you were going through both.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
So were you going through mentally or are you going
through kind of swings along all these steps.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Well, it was just like this, it was like, this
thing happened to me and I don't know what to
do with it. Yeah, right, and I'm angry. I wanted
the world to stop for me and to mourn with me. Yeah,
and I was angry that it didn't.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
Yeah, you're in the city. That place is never stopping.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
Right, And then you know the cliche, it always happens
to the best ones. Yeah, it's like, why did this
happen to him and not? And here I pull out
my scroll of all the people who, all the villains
of this world who deserve what he got, Why.
Speaker 6 (37:04):
Did it happen to them?
Speaker 3 (37:06):
You know, your typical existential wonderings when faced with something
like that. And I think the reflective desire be it
out of some kind of guilt or some feeling of
obligation and duty to the person who had involved to
do something with it, rather than just be a schmuck
(37:29):
for whom something happens to and then they go on
with their lives. And also I should say, it occurs
to me that it was a way of keeping him
close to me in that moment, as many things still are,
which is kind of I find how morning works in
a way is so much of the way we express
(37:52):
pain is trying to keep that pain close to us,
because it's scary to go forward in life without this
thing that you've come to know so much, whether it's
a person and their love or the pain of losing them,
it is scary to move forward without those things.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah, I feel like for me, walking can sort of
serve as a metaphor that you do move forward, and
they'll be swings along the way where it sucks you
feel like hell, you'll also have highs and lows, and
that's kind of just like this metaphor for life. But
you're still moving forward in that direction, you know.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
Right Cutting back to that day, that fateful day, I've
got the backpack on, I'm a crossing the Weddingsburg Bridge
and I'm going, I can't believe I've never walked across
the Manhattan Bridge. So today I'm going to do something different.
I'm going to walk across the Manhattan Bridge and the
Manhattan Bridge.
Speaker 6 (38:54):
As far as bridges in.
Speaker 3 (38:56):
New York go, it's not all that iconic between the
Williamsburg and the Brooklyn Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge being the
most iconic one, the Williamsburg Bridge having arguably the best
walking and bicycling path, and the Manhattan Bridge is a
little less value hooed. I should say it's a mid
level bridge. It's a very like, well, I have a
(39:17):
view on this, Okay, let's hear it. I'm starting to
walk across the bridge and I was expecting the absolute worst,
which I would experience later that day. But I'm walking
across this bridge and I'm going, oh my god, you
know what I'm realizing about this bridge. I believe it
is the highest of all of the bridge heights in
New York. But at the very least you are looking
(39:40):
over the Brooklyn Bridge. So it is the best view
you're going to get, arguably, of the Brooklyn Bridge out
into New York Harbor.
Speaker 6 (39:48):
It's a beautiful view.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
The walking path is very small, the bic clean path
very small, but it's a beautiful view of the harbor.
And so I'm standing in the middle of the bridge
looking at the view, going damn, this is nice, and
I'm so glad I did this. But you know what,
I've also never done, never walked across the Queensboro Bridge.
And I say to myself, well, I don't have that
(40:10):
much work to do today. I mean, I told my
coworkers that we had somebody was out, so I had
to answer a couple calls or something. But it's like,
I can spend the day doing this. I got enough
battery on my phone and listen to music. I'm not
that tired yet. What if I crossed all four of
the major bridges, the Walliensburg Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge, the
(40:33):
Brooklyn Bridge, and the Queensboro Bridge in one day?
Speaker 6 (40:35):
Can I do it?
Speaker 3 (40:36):
And I was, you know, I at that point was
a couple hours in and it did not feel all
that difficult to me. And so off I go across
the Manhattan Bridge into a neighborhood called Dumbo, which is
an acronym that stands for down under Manhattan Bridge Overpass,
(40:57):
and I start walking to the Brooklyn Bridge. And I
get on the Brooklyn Bridge and I cross the Brooklyn Bridge,
which is no matter what time of year, it is
virtually always touristy and insane and ridiculous.
Speaker 6 (41:11):
You know, if the.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
Williamsburg Bridge is like lovely in Assyrian Walk and the
Manhattan Bridge is just a tighter walk, a little bit
more rough around the edges, but still pretty calm, the
Brooklyn Bridge is always just teeming with people, you know,
TikTokers and people selling stuff. And it's a different slice
in New York. And I think, well, I want to
(41:32):
stay by the water. This was one of my mistakes
or not, depending on how you see it. So I
go Doe east on Manhattan and I walk up the
side of Manhattan near the water. And this is the
longest part of the walk, because now I'm at the
bomb of Manhattan. So I'm going under the Manhattan Bridge
under the Williamsburg Bridge all the way up to fifty
(41:54):
seventh Street, and I don't know how many blocks it
is exactly from City Hall to fifty seventh Street where
the Queensboro bridges.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
That's got to be only six miles.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
Let's see, I'm doing the numbers right now. It says
walking from the Brooklyn Bridge to the Queensboro Bridge, it's
approximately five point five to six miles. This route generally
falls a path along the East River, such as the
Second Avenue or East with River Greenway. So I definitely
took the longest version of that, which was six miles. Okay,
(42:25):
And it is now midday and the sun is beating
down on me. I'm starting to feel it summer humid,
middle of the summer, and I've got this backpack on
my back.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
Yeah, twounds something like that.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
So now I'm stopping at a park or two to
take a sit. I get up to the Queensboro Bridge,
which I have again never crossed doing something new. I
cannot in good faith recommend walking across the Queensboro Bridge
because the walking and biking biking paths are one and
the same. You're at level with the cars, so you're
(42:58):
basically just a huff and smog, and when it drops
you off, it drops you off in the middle of Queens. Now,
if you are a touristing New York and you tell
me you're going to this part of New York, I'm
probably convinced that you're either lost or you've done something
terribly wrong in your trip planning.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
I walk off the Queensboro Bridge and now I'm in
Long Island City. Long Island City was actually the first
neighborhood I moved to in New York, and I moved
there with Henry in two thousand and five. We shared
a It was a one bedroom apartment. The girl who
lived there took the bedroom. We were sleeping on mattresses
(43:38):
on the floor of the living room.
Speaker 6 (43:40):
Awesome.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
How far did you end up walking the entire day?
Speaker 3 (43:43):
Well, once I got to Queens I was like, all right,
home stretch. Yeah, So I walked over the Pulawski Bridge
that connects Long Island City to Greenpoint. That's about forty
five minutes from my place. And I got there and
I said, well, you're already here, you might as well
do the full lap. I instead chose to walk south
(44:04):
along the Green Point in Williamsburg Waterfront all the way
back to the base of the Williamsburg Bridge and then
walk home, which is about twenty minutes for my place.
So as opposed to walking forty minutes from Greenpoint back
to my place, I threw on another forty minutes plus
the twenty it takes to get from Williamsburg back to mine,
(44:28):
and at that point it was about twenty five or
twenty four miles.
Speaker 6 (44:34):
Then I get home.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
I take the bag off. Holy shit, I've never felt
anything like that felt wait, it was, well, just immediately
I knew that. Typically for anybody who's used a rucking backpack,
you know the feeling of you take off the bag.
You feel a sense of like relief and lighter. It's
like when you're done doing a heavy set of lifting weights.
(44:59):
Your arms feel a little bit more nimble and area
and like they can move through air a little bit
more quickly. Same thing when you take off a rocking
backpack after like a normal ruck I take off the
rocking backpack.
Speaker 6 (45:09):
I do not feel that. I just feel sore.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
Yeah, like what have I done? I love the moment
where you.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
Go.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
I've never crossed all the bridges. What if I gave
it a shot like that insight. I wonder where that
came from. Where you're kind of doing something that's you know,
you're pushing your edge a little bit and you just go, yeah,
but how much farther can I take this thing? That's
the best. I've had a few of those moments in
my life where I'm out doing something you just go,
(45:43):
what if I just keep going, Let's see what happens.
And it's like you go into this unexplored zone where
you're going to test this thing and see what you
maybe learn from it along the way. And I personally
have found it's great for ideas, it's great for just
kind of thinking. I mean especially and I haven't done
it after something that significant of my life happened, like
(46:07):
the loss of a friend or something. But I can
say I gain a lot of insights from good example,
when I did this crazy long hike in you saw
It last year, I came to like the center of
my life and what I want to do with it
and how I'm spending my time. And that would not
have happened if I were to just take an hour
(46:27):
long walk around my house. It's like I had to
really get out and get the time under my feet
and let my mind just wander and go places, and
it found where it needed to go, and I learned
some things.
Speaker 3 (46:38):
I wish those moments would happen more in my life totally.
It was so inadvertent, and it was born out of
it was born out of I literally don't want to
be in the house anymore. Yeah, And it was a
variation on the line you don't have to go home,
but you can't stay here. I didn't want to go home.
I didn't want to stay where I was. And so
(46:59):
is truly this moment of like what if I just
do this? And you saying that that's really interesting? Like
how often in life do we want to break out
of the pattern and the thing that we're doing to
get somewhere else. I wish I could come across those
moments every day. I wish I could break my routines
(47:21):
with the moxie of wanting to change shit up and
the impetus to just try something and then go with
it totally. And here I should mention that I did
it a second year. And what I'm going to do
is I'm going to walk across different bridges, so I
(47:42):
load up the backpack, I fill it with a couple
frozen bottles of ice water. It is even hotter this
day than it was the year before. It is scorching.
The bridges I end up crossing are mostly in Brooklyn
and Queens Yeah, And the only public transport I took
during this day was until I got to my final destination,
(48:06):
the tram that takes you from Roosevelt Island down to
the Queensboro Bridge.
Speaker 6 (48:10):
I walk.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
And also, I'd never been on Roosevelt Island at this point,
lived in New York for you know, nineteen years, eighteen
years at this point, never been on Roosevelt Island, never
been on any of these bridges either. There's a reason
for that. So I take the tram, I walk across
Central Park.
Speaker 6 (48:27):
I walk across the Bow Bridge, which goes over.
Speaker 3 (48:29):
The pond in Central Park. It is, fun fact, the
shortest pedestrian bridge in New York City and one of
the oldest. And then I decide, here's what I'm gonna do.
I'm going to walk all the way up to the
George Washington Bridge from what fifty seventh Street in Central Park.
I walk all the way to the top of Central Park.
Never done that fifty eighth Street, or at the wherever
(48:53):
I was at the top of Central Park, whatever block
that is one hundred and tenth Street. Maybe it's where
you start tripping over needles in the park. You're you're
on the west side, climbing up through Harlem. It is hot.
I was walking into Bodega's looking like oh, and I
also had my camera with me and added a couple
(49:14):
of pounds. I mean, I was soaked in sweat, caked
in dirt. I looked like I was trying to give
myself dehydration and what is it, rabbo dialosis or whatever
whatever the condition is where your muscles start breaking down
and poisoning your body. For sure, rabo. Yeah, looked like
(49:37):
I was trying to give myself that.
Speaker 1 (49:39):
I will say. The nice thing about walking around New
York is plenty of resources. You know, if you're not
doing it in the wilderness, you're like shit, I ran
out of water, I ran out of food. What am
I going to do?
Speaker 6 (49:48):
There's a bodega right there.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
There's a bodega right there. He's got everything you could
ever need.
Speaker 6 (49:51):
That's that is correct.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
And and so I get all the way up to
the George Washington Bridge, which is well at the top
of Manhattan. The George Washington Bridge connects New Jersey to Manhattan.
And I get up to it and I am, I'm
just cooked. And I walk across the George Washington Bridge,
(50:15):
which is, as far as bridges go, probably the most
like epic and insane bridge of them all. Traffics going
right by you. You are very high up. You're looking
up the Hudson River to the Hudson Valley down at
the rest of Manhattan. It's pretty epic, but it's also
you're walking to New Jersey. And so I get to
(50:36):
the line in the sidewalk that says New York and
then there's a line that says New Jersey and I
look at it and I say, fuck this. No I
believe I said to myself, fuck New Jersey. And I
turn around start walking back, and I get about fifty
feet and I go, if you don't cross this bridge
(50:59):
and get all the way of the New the New
Jersey side and back, this will haunt you for the rest.
Speaker 6 (51:03):
Of your life.
Speaker 1 (51:04):
Gotta finish, gotta finish.
Speaker 3 (51:07):
So I truck it, go all the way over to the
New Jersey side, look at it.
Speaker 1 (51:12):
Experience a little bit of New Jersey trauma. If you're
going to go up to the edge of the wasteland,
you just gotta get in take a peek.
Speaker 6 (51:19):
Listen.
Speaker 3 (51:19):
I put a foot in that was more than enough.
And then I turned around and hiked back. And then
I got on the A train and took it all
the way down to fourteenth Street, got on the L
took it back to my place. And if I was
sore the year before this time, I.
Speaker 6 (51:34):
Was cooked cooked.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
I mean I must have been sore for three days
after I it was. It went from being an enjoyable, fun,
ritual discovery to this moby dick like hunt for new
experiences that cost me body, mind, and soul.
Speaker 1 (51:57):
So what did you learn in totality from this? Because
we set this up by you're not a person who
would normally do this. Something prompted this that wasn't what
you would hope for.
Speaker 6 (52:12):
I mean, listen, I am.
Speaker 3 (52:14):
I am, like many of your adherents, deranged enough to
put on a backpack full of weight for the sake of.
Speaker 1 (52:19):
Doing so heavy, for the syc of being heavy.
Speaker 3 (52:22):
I learned exactly the thing that I set out to,
which was the new things are possible, and I would
do well to internalize that. I think, if anything, I've
failed to capitalize on that, maybe as much as I
should or would have liked to. No, certainly as much
as I should or would have liked to because and
(52:44):
I already feel the cliche spilling out of me. But
you don't really know what you're capable of until you
try it. And it doesn't actually take that much to
show you that or to demonstrate that. Literally, for me,
it was just putting one foot in front of another
(53:05):
and I did.
Speaker 6 (53:07):
I did, and it was wonderful. And I don't want.
Speaker 3 (53:12):
To be prescriptive about this, but I think it would
be a comment upon me to find more opportunities to
do that. And I don't you know, it's it's like
they say at financial firms, past performance does not indicate
future results. So I don't want to make this promise
to anybody, but I don't think most people are going
(53:33):
to be the lesser for.
Speaker 1 (53:34):
It has just been talking and kind of telling this
larger story. There was a guy who helped me get sober,
like the most influential person in that journey, and he
got diagnosed with stage four colon cancer, similar to you,
he goes. I was in the house. I didn't want
(53:54):
to be in the house. I didn't really want to
be anywhere else though, So I just went outside, took
a walk, ended up taking a long walk, and he
goes somewhere along that walk. I became okay with it.
It is what it is. And he returned home with
this totally different outlook. Now that dude knew we had
(54:17):
stage four colon cancer once he started helping me. I
didn't know he had that until i'd met known him
for like three months. And I think back to that
all the time, just the selflessness behind that, and also
where that comes from. And I do think sometimes you
(54:38):
need to go do something that allows you to process
and reframe things. Yeah, and I think if you look
at the grand history of humanity, walking has always been
one of those things. Why do people go on pilgrimage?
Why do things happen mentally? You go on a walk
and it appears as a physical act. It's not. It
(54:59):
is a physical act, but it's more a mental exploration
in a way.
Speaker 3 (55:04):
I dare anybody listen to this, who visits New York
City or Paris or London to go and put twenty
thousand steps in near the center of those cities.
Speaker 6 (55:17):
Don't retrace any of them. Just twenty thousand.
Speaker 3 (55:19):
They'll take you, by my account, you know, not two
hundred minutes, give or take so three hours. Your life
will improve dramatically that I will guarantee, absent some tragedy
or active God, there is just nothing like going for
a good walk.
Speaker 6 (55:38):
There really isn't.
Speaker 1 (55:39):
Feels like a perfect note to end on Foster, Thanks
for coming on, man.
Speaker 3 (55:44):
Man my pleasure. What a joy, What a joy.
Speaker 1 (55:51):
All right, let's wrap things up, let's land the plane.
So we have just talked to two people who are
talking about really extreme forms of walking. On one hand,
we have this ridiculous Stephen King murderous scenario where these
boys have to walk very far, and yes, it shows
us that the human body is capable of walking extreme
distances if we need to. On the other hand, we
(56:12):
have Foster, who without any training, ended up rocking more
than a marathon across New York City. These are unbelievable,
inspiring forms of walking, but at the same time raises
a question, how many steps should you be getting day
to day? I'm talking about in the trenches of daily life,
where you're not taking on these giant challenges where you're
just like, how many steps do I need in order
(56:35):
to be healthy? Now here's what I'll say. You've probably
heard the numbers ten thousand. Turns out that's a myth.
So it was started by a Japanese pedometer manufacturer who
named their pedometer the man Poquet, and that translates to
the ten thousand steps meter. That number stuck. There's a
couple reasons for that. One, it's five figures rather than four. Two,
(56:59):
it's very memorable, it's nice and round, and three it's
enough walking that you actually have to get out and
take a walk in order to hit it. So that
number just sort of stuck. That's what everyone thought, Oh,
that is the optimal number of steps a day. But
then something happened. Scientists started digging into the data and
they found that ten thousand steps isn't really the optimal number.
So there are two ways to look at this. First,
(57:22):
there is a daily step count that is sort of
the bare minimum that you should get for health, and
the second is sort of an optimal number.
Speaker 6 (57:29):
It's higher.
Speaker 1 (57:30):
It gives you the greatest return on your health. At
the same time, it's quite a few steps. So the
first number, if you just want to hit the bare
minimum of health benefits, and this is backed by a
study in a Lancet. Plenty of other studies have looked
into this. Researchers generally fine that seven thousand steps a
day is an ideal number that lets you sort of
(57:51):
maximize your health benefits in the minimum amount of time possible.
So if you're pressed for time, your goal should be
seven thousand a day. That helps you ward off most diseases.
It reduces your risk of dying early. That is a
great number. That said, more is better, So if you
dive deeper into that data, the studies find that twelve
(58:13):
thousand steps a day allows you to absolutely maximize your
health benefits. And the catch is doing more than twelve thousand,
it doesn't seem to reduce your risk of disease any further.
It doesn't give you any more. Now that said, the
benefits of going from seven thousand to twelve thousand steps
a day, we're just a little bit better. It's not
(58:34):
like a crazy difference. So again seven thousand, if you
want to hit the bare minimum, twelve thousand will get
you a little more benefits. Of course, it's going to
take a lot more time and then the inevitable question
is okay, great, now that I know the real numbers,
how do I actually get that amount of steps let's
say seven thousand. Here's my advice. I think you should
(58:56):
look for ways that you can add walking into things
that you already have to do. One of my favorite
stories about this comes from this woman who reads my
two percent substack. Her name was Mary. She had a
desk job where she would take phone calls all day.
She was only getting two to three thousand steps a day.
What she did is she realized, oh, I do have
(59:16):
to take all these phone calls for work, but I
do not have to take them sitting. So she started
popping in headphones and taking her calls while walking, and
she was able to get well past seven thousand steps
a day. Nothing in her life changed except she started
taking those phone calls while walking. So the takeaway look
for easy ways to add more walking in your life.
(59:36):
As for me, and I may sound like a complete
and utter psychopath for saying this, I get about fourteen
thousand steps a day at the same time I'm not
necessarily trying to. Instead, I happen to have an absolutely
insane hunting dog named Duke. And if he doesn't get
the steps in, he is just going to go find
a mission in my house and it typically involves, i
(59:58):
don't know, pulling down a computer monitor or a coffee maker,
so he really incentivizes me to get in all those steps.
That is our show for today. Thanks for checking it out,
and thank you to Foster and Melissa for talking to
us about the power of walking. Do not forget to subscribe,
and if you have a question, please put it in
(01:00:18):
the comments or send us an email and we will
try and answer as many questions as possible. And if
you want bonus points, send us that question in a
voice memo or in video format and we will have that.
We would absolutely love that. As always, in closing, have fun,
don't die.
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