Fitness & fatness
Thinking Allowed
BBC
4.4 • 997 Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2021
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Fitness & fatness: Laurie Taylor asks if they are two sides of the same coin. He's joined by Jürgen Martschukat, Professor of North American History at the University of Erfurt and author of a new book which looks at the history of self-optimisation from the Enlightenment to the present. What’s the relationship between neoliberalism and phenomena like Viagra & aerobics? How did the body come to symbolise success and achievement? Also, Sarah Trainer, medical anthropologist at Seattle University, discusses her study on extreme weight loss, via bariatric surgery. Her in depth interviews with patients reveal, in painstaking detail, how the journey to drastic weight - often half a person's body weight - can be at once painful and liberating, revealing which bodies are treated as though they don't belong in modern societies. Thinking Allowed is produced in partnership with the Open University.
Producer: Jayne Egerton
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of |
| 0:07.0 | Happiness Podcast. |
| 0:08.0 | For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want |
| 0:14.4 | to share that science with you. |
| 0:16.1 | And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley. |
| 0:19.4 | I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that |
| 0:25.4 | calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:30.3 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:36.0 | This is a Thinking Loud Podcasts from the BBC and for more details and much, much more about |
| 0:42.2 | thinking aloud, go to our website at BBC.co. UK. |
| 0:47.0 | Hello at exactly half past eight this morning in the privacy of my attic room I reverentially began to enact lesson number three in my exercise Bible First lie flat on the floor face down with your hands in line with your shoulders and feet, hip width apart on your toes. |
| 1:15.0 | Now push upwards, keeping your hips elevated, |
| 1:18.0 | and your core engaged. |
| 1:20.0 | My core, my core, what exactly is my call? |
| 1:23.0 | Now slowly lower your body by bending your elbows, holding them well tucked in. |
| 1:28.0 | No, I can't hold it. |
| 1:31.0 | The push-up has become a drop-down. |
| 1:38.0 | Not altogether a perfect morning's workout, |
| 1:41.0 | but at least I felt in some sort of harmony with millions of my fellow |
| 1:45.0 | citizens. All those single-minded strivers who at some time today were walking nowhere |
| 1:51.2 | on treadmills, riding nowhere on static bikes, rowing nowhere in |
| 1:55.7 | stationary boats or lifting up lots of heavyweights merely in order to put them all down again. |
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