Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.

Humans have been infatuated with sport for thousands of years, but what drove this obsession in the first place?

And how did ancient pursuits evolve into the games we know and love today?

On today's episode, John Borkham speaks to QI researchers and hosts of the No Such Thing

as a Fish podcast, James Harkin and Anna Tashinsky, about their new book

on sporting history, discussing everything from doping to David Attenborough's impact on snooker.

James and Anna, welcome to the History Extra podcast today.

Thanks for having us, John.

Thank you.

Now, listeners may already be familiar with you both through your own

hugely successful podcast, No Such Thing as a Fish, and of course your work on the BBC

television series, QI. But you've also just written a fantastic new book on the history of

sport called A Load of Old Balls, and we're going to be talking about some of the interesting tidbits

from that book today. To kick off, then, let's go back to the very, very beginning.

How long have humans been playing sport do we think? I like your use of the word kickoff, John.

And I think one thing that we've noticed since we're writing this book is you can't send an email without some sporting cliche in there.

It's just in there all the time because it seems like this inherent thing in humans that sport is just everywhere.

It's all around us.

And we reckon that possibly humans were playing sport before we were even humans, because we've seen evidence of sport in

animals. And if you look at the way that humans have evolved, our toes, for instance,

are perfect for long distance running. If they were 20% longer, then running would take twice as

much energy. And our jaws and our fists may well have evolved in order to help us fight to box

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