Support for the Radio West podcast comes from Harmon's Grocery, offering the Harmon's app, where customers can shop online while choosing favorites, clipping coupons, and checking out at a convenient time.

Harman's Quality Delivered.

The writer Bill Gifford has a new book about heat, about how we have adapted to it.

So he goes way back to when our ability to sweat gave early humans an edge.

And he lays out the modern research too, like how using heat is linked to lower risks of things like heart disease and Alzheimer's, how high heat

seems to trigger these proteins in the body that help with cellular repair, how it might play

a role in recovery and resilience. So the book is this mix of evolution and physiology and modern

science, and it's all centered on this idea that heat isn't just something to avoid.

It's something the body actually responds to in these really complex ways.

And, as you might expect, Gifford writes about saunas

and how they show up in cultures all over the world.

And so if you're going to write about Sauna's, naturally, you

have to go to Finland, which he did. And you're probably imagining some wooden hut on

the lake, on the edge of the woods, covered in snow. Well, it's not quite how it happened.

Gifford was in an industrial town, not far from Helsinki.

It had these sort of old school public sauna bathhouses,

and one of them in particular was called Raiaporti.

It's like this unassuming building, just off the bus line, not fancy.

There's like weathered letters that just say sauna over the door.

It's like 10 bucks.

Sex segregated, butt naked.

Out of my comfort zone, let's just say.

...