668: Endurance Lessons from an Anthropologist with Dr. Michael Crawley
Age Less / Live More
Lucas Rockwood
4.8 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 16 April 2025
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In endurance sports, certain countries consistently dominate the podium. While many theories attempt to explain this, the most overlooked—and perhaps the most relevant—is culture. The influence of your social group and peers plays a huge role in shaping your choices and potential, yet we often assume that health and fitness are driven by gadgets, apps, or elite trainers. In reality, human connection, support, and a sense of adventure may be the biggest performance enhancers. This week’s podcast explores high-performance endurance athletics through the lens of anthropology.
Listen and learn:
- How training in Ethiopia differs from the rest of the world
- The power of fun, play, and variety in training
- Why community and social support might be the missing ingredient
Link
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Dr. Michael Crawley is an anthropologist, writer, and accomplished runner. He is an Assistant Professor of Social Anthropology at Durham University and author of Out of Thin Air (2020) and To the Limit (2024).
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In the world of endurance athletics, such as the marathon, there are certain countries that are overrepresented on the podium. |
| 0:07.3 | This is no secret. |
| 0:08.5 | There are lots of different theories floating around about why, but the least discussed theory is probably the most relevant. |
| 0:14.6 | That's culture. |
| 0:15.7 | Your social group, your peers, it plays such a huge role in your life choices and your potential, but a lot of us |
| 0:22.3 | take it for granted. We assume that health and fitness are pay to play, meaning some new device, |
| 0:27.4 | some expensive shoes, some elite trainer, for sure that'll make a difference, but probably |
| 0:32.3 | not as much difference as the group of people, your surroundings, your support network. |
| 0:37.4 | On this week's podcast, we'll explore the world of high performance endurance athleticism |
| 0:41.5 | from the perspective of an anthropologist. |
| 0:44.4 | If you're new here, this is age less, live more with Lucas Rockwood. |
| 0:47.4 | I'm a yoga teacher and trainer, a serial entrepreneur, and the father of three kids. |
| 0:51.7 | Firstly, I'm a student, and I use this podcast as a way to research and |
| 0:55.8 | share information about health span, how we can all live our best lives, especially in the second |
| 1:01.0 | half of life. If you like what we're doing here, the way to support the show is to share the |
| 1:05.4 | episode with a friend. If you have a question for me for the podcast, email me podcast at |
| 1:10.2 | yoga body.com. |
| 1:11.6 | Lastly, if you're interested in health span, I have an online studio called Yoga Body Daily. |
| 1:16.7 | We do strength and stretch and steps every day. |
| 1:19.1 | You can find out about that at yogabody.com. |
| 1:23.6 | Welcome, everyone. It's Lucas here. |
| 1:25.2 | Today's show is called Endurance Lessons from an Anthropologist. I am joined here with Dr. Michael Crowley. Michael is an anthropologist, a writer. He's a very accomplished runner in his own right. He serves as assistant professor of social anthropology at Durham University in the UK. He's got a couple of books you'd want to check out out of thin air. And to the limit limit we'll be talking about his work and his research |
... |
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