I'm Alan Alder and this is Clear In Vivid, Conversations About Connecting and Communicating.

We were there to measure energy expenditures, which are really fundamental to any organisms

in biology.

We were there to measure energy expenditures with the HODS 100 Gathering population in northern

Tanzania to get the first measurements of energy expenditure with the Hunter Gathering

population.

We were sure that you can imagine it's very physically demanding to be a hunter gatherer.

We thought they would have very high energy expenditures every day.

In fact, what we saw was that when we compared their calories, they burn every day to the

calories that many women in the US and other Western countries burn every day, it's the

same.

That's anthropologist Herman Ponser. His new book is burned.

How new research blows the lid of how we really burn calories, lose weight, and stay healthy.

His striking discovery that HODS 100 Gatherers apparently use their calories differently

than most of us do, led him to radically rethink why exercise is good for us.

And it turns out that it's much more than just losing weight.

This is going to be great talking with you because I find you to be such a wonderful

communicator, a terrific writer.

I love the way you open the book, waking up in a tent in Tanzania.

First of all, happy that you can hear the lions grumbling, not many feet away.

And then realizing that they're liable to eat you any bit.

And then deciding, no, they probably won't go back to sleep.

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