Hello I'm Doug Gordon. In this special episode for Patreon supporters, I talk with journalist Peter Walker about his new book, The Miracle Pill, why a sedentary world is getting it all wrong.

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Thanks so much everybody.

One of the things I found so interesting about the book is how recent so much of the research on the dangers of inactivity and the benefits of more active lifestyles happens to be.

I mean we're talking about a lot of research that begins in sort of the post-World War era and you start the book early on with the

research of a man named Jerry Morris I found this story fascinating I wonder if you could introduce us to Jerry

Jerry Morris is a man who basically deserves a book on his own not just a chapter in

mine he was this kind of radical epidemiologist if you can call a person. The kind of key

context to it which is something that I didn't properly discover until writing

this book was that whilst kind of you know doctors over the ages have often you

know thought well being active must be good for you it was never actually

proved until he did this pioneering piece of research in 1953.

And in fact, there was this kind of strange period

in the kind of, in the UK certainly,

in the kind of Victorian to post-war period

where there was a genuine worry that you know doctors thought

that exerting yourself too much was bad for your heart and might cause you to die

...