I'm Alan Alder and this is Clear In Vivid, conversations about connecting and communicating.

For me the apotheosis of how horrible modern exercises is the treadmill.

I mean, you know, it's why it's on the cover, it's why I kind of use it throughout the

book as a kind of a running joke.

Think about it, it's a horrible, noisy, nasty, expensive machine that makes you work really

hard to get nowhere.

You know, to wait to tolerate a treadmill is to either listen to something, listen to

some good music, listen to a podcast, watch something, but nobody can tolerate it on

its own, at least not for more than a few minutes.

I mean, it's a form of torture.

And actually, that's kind of one of the jokes because the treadmill was actually invented

as a form of torture.

That's Harvard Anthropology Professor Dan Lieberman.

In case it sounds like he's anti-exercise, here's the full title of the book he's just written.

Exercise.

Why something we never evolved to do is healthy and rewarding.

An avid runner himself, Dan takes an entertaining look at what most of our ancestors would have

thought was crazy, voluntary physical activity.

This is going to be fun because you deal with a subject I cope with every day, along with

millions of other people.

Well, that's why I wrote it.

Was I opening in many ways the book he wrote?

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