FT Weekend: Does Peloton trick us into working out?
FT News Briefing
Forhecz Topher
4.4 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 5 February 2022
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This weekend, we look at the Peloton phenomenon. Is it a failing fitness cult or a lasting way to stay healthy? Lilah and San Francisco correspondent Patrick McGee explore the behavioural science behind why we don’t exercise and the tech that tricks our brains into doing it anyway. Then, management editor Andrew Hill tells us why so many bad business books exist at the airport, and what makes a good one
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If you want to explore the FT, use this link for special discounts for listeners: http://ft.com/weekendpodcast
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Want to say hi? We love hearing from you. Email us at [email protected]. We’re on Twitter @ftweekendpod, and Lilah is on Instagram and Twitter @lilahrap.
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Links and mentions from the episode:
–Patrick McGee on how connected fitness became the new obsession: https://on.ft.com/32YplFd
–Andrew Hill: ‘Pulp non-fiction: the worst business books of 2022’: https://on.ft.com/34ao7Hz
–All the winners and shortlisted books for FT and McKinsey's best business books of the year award https://ig.ft.com/sites/business-book-award/
–If you want to read more about the culture of Peloton, here’s ‘This is your brain on Peloton’, by Amanda Hess (NYT): https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/arts/peloton-cody-rigsby-content.html
–Anne Helen Peterson is the unofficial internet scholar on Peloton celebrity: https://annehelen.substack.com/p/towards-a-unified-theory-of-peloton
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Original music by Metaphor Music. Mixing and sound design is by Breen Turner.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The FT Weekend Podcast, supported by Ledger, the secure way to buy, exchange and grow your crypto. |
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| 0:22.0 | Last week, I accidentally kind of went viral anonymously. |
| 0:26.0 | I have a Peloton bike in my apartment and one night, I took a class with an instructor named Dennis Morton. |
| 0:32.0 | What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining me. My name is Dennis Morton and welcome to Peloton. |
| 0:36.0 | He's very traditionally handsome. He's deeply uncool. His music taste is both informed and also very uncool. |
| 0:44.0 | And I couldn't figure out why I like riding with him so much. |
| 0:48.0 | Here we go. Wait too fast or just the right speed. |
| 0:52.0 | I also couldn't figure out who to talk to about it. So I wrote a post on Reddit on this popular Peloton subreddit and called it, what is it about Dennis? |
| 1:01.0 | I explained him like this. It's the late 90s and someone's hot older brother is giving you a ride to school. |
| 1:07.0 | And he's playing Dave Matthews in his car and he starts crying to the lyrics. |
| 1:12.0 | This is honestly a pretty embarrassing story but comments started flooding in. |
| 1:16.0 | It got 1100 upvotes, over 300 comments. It was seen by almost 170,000 people. |
| 1:23.0 | So I messaged a few of them and they graciously agreed to help explain what exactly it is about Dennis. |
| 1:30.0 | Dennis is definitely my favorite and he just feels like someone I would have gone to high school with. |
| 1:37.0 | You know, maybe we would have worked together at McDonald's. |
| 1:39.0 | He reminds me of my sister who is like 15 years older than me and would pick me up from school. |
| 1:45.0 | Yeah, he just has sort of a dorkiness about him. I'm not sure if there's another word that I could use. |
| 1:50.0 | Someone who is maybe like still telling the inside joke from the office Christmas party two years ago. |
| 1:56.0 | All of the Peloton instructors have catchphrases. If you don't squeeze your glutes, no one else will. |
| 2:02.0 | But Dennis, he's saying if I want the cadence to be 40 and you don't feel you can do 40, don't do 40. |
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