Studio 360: Born to Run

The '68 Olympic games changed everything for John Carlos. He and fellow runner Tommie Smith raised their fists in the black power salute on the podium in a moment that became known as the most defiant and controversial in Olympics history. Carlos remembers that moment and the fallout that came later in the book The John Carlos Story. He told Steve Paulson that the moment was inspired with a meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr.

Next, Dave Raichlen studies the elusive beast known as runner’s high. Not everyone who runs gets it, it seems to come and go for those who do, and science doesn’t yet know the magic spell that brings it on just yet. But Dave Raichlen at the University of Arizona at Tucson is getting closer. He’s looking at runner’s high from an evolutionary perspective, by studying people, dogs and ferrets.

Then, most of us want to exercise smart, to get the most bang for our buck in the least amount of time. Gretchen Reynolds writes the Phys Ed column for the New York Times which appears in the Well blog online and in the Science Times print section. She’s compiled the latest in exercise science into the book The First 20 Minutes to help keep our work-outs working.

And finally, Adharanand Finn had always been a runner. After entering and winning a race in his hometown of Devon, England, Finn decided it was time to train seriously again. The Kenyans, he thought, some of the fastest people in the world, would be the perfect training partners. So, he went to Kenya, to run seriously and to try to unlock the secrets of speed. He writes about the journey in his book Running with the Kenyans. [Broadcast Date: June 5, 2013]