Radiolab - Man Against Horse

Episode Date: July 7, 2023

This is a story about your butt. It’s a story about how you got your butt, why you have your butt, and how your butt might be one of the most important and essential things for you being you, for being human.  In this episode from 2019, Reporter Heather Radke and Producer Matt Kielty talk to two researchers who followed the butt from our ancient beginnings through millions of years of evolution, all the way to today, out to a valley in Arizona, where our butts are put to the ultimate test.   Special thanks to Michelle Legro. EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Heather Radke and Matt KieltyProduced by - Matt Kieltywith help from - Simon Adler and Rachael CusickOriginal music and sound design contributed by - Jeremy BloomFact-checking by - Dorie Chevlen   EPISODE CITATIONS: Books: Butts by Heather Radke Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [e-mail] Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

This is Radio Lab, I am Lulu. And today we have a tale about some tale. We got a backstory to the back story. That's right, we are here to talk about butts. We're pulling back a story from the archives that is very strange. It's about endurance and horses and what it means to be human. And it comes to us from our contributing editor, Heather Radke, and we're airing it today because her book, Butts,

the one she was working on way back when this piece first aired, is now out in paperback. It's so much fun. It's kind of a Trojan horse. Seems all silly on the front and then you open it. It's deep. It's funny. The buns of steel guy is in there. It's just been picked as like a best summer read. It's great. Anyway, it's out but a backstory by Heather Radke. Go check it out. And to just give you kind of a sense of the kind of reporting, Heather does around this. We're gonna air this piece called Man vs. Horse, Heather in conversation with our producer, Matt Kelti.

Here we go, enjoy. Wait, wait, you're listening. Okay. Okay. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio from WNYC. Hey, hey, Chad Abumrod. This is Radio Lab, and today we've got a story from our producer Matt Kieltey, and reporter Heather Ratkey.

All right. I have no idea where we should start. I always want to like it to like with the dawn of human civilization. Uh, maybe. Okay, so the story comes to us from Heather, who is a fantastic writer who brought us a story that, if I were to boil it down, is about a horse, a lone man running to the desert,

and what it fundamentally means to be a human being. And weirdly but, I didn't see this coming, but it's about but, just but, your butt, it's about your butt. You got to say it a few times, but. Okay, so let's back up. I am writing a book about the cultural history's about your butt. You got to say it a few times, butts. Okay, so let's back up. I am writing a book about the cultural history

of the female butt. Oh, interesting. I know, I thought I'd save that one for on tape. It started as an essay that I was just working on because I have a big butt and I grew up in the suburbs of Mid-Michigan. That was pretty white. And in high school, in the 90s,

it was very much like not good to have a big butt. Like, I got made fun of, et cetera, et cetera. But then some time in the mid-Auths, all of a sudden this body that had sort of been bringing me all the shame became attractive in sort of a mainstream way. And as Heather started picking that apart and looking at these things about race, appropriation, beauty, this essay about the butt,

and it would be coming a book about the butt. About, you know, what does the butt mean? Like, what does it symbolize? And why does it symbolize that? But before she could really dive in all those things, she realized she had, like, just a more fundamental question. Why do we even have a butt at all? Okay. So, I started to research, just like, search around for people who have tried to answer it

before, but because of what a butt is, just even anatomically, it's not a simple question. Because it's Heather points out you have, you know, the butt, the aesthetic object, like the whole entire butt. And there's two parts to the butt. There's the butt that's the muscle. And then there's the butt that's the fat. So I talk to the fat butt people and there's a lot of them. And although there's a lot of different theories about why we have fat butts, there's no real consensus. No one knows why we have the fat. Do we have the fat because we sit a lot? But then why do men have so much less than women

as kind of the question? So then Heather started looking at the butt muscle. Butt muscle, yeah. Which letter to this guy? Sorry, I just missed you for a second. Say that again. Daniel Lieberman. This evolutionary biologist at Harvard.

You want to talk about the gluteus maximus, if I recall. I do. I do. I do. So you called him up. You're sort of the preeminent while back for your book. But muscle scientists as far as I can tell. It's an interesting distinction, but it's possibly true. Then we call them up not too long ago. I don't know everybody. Yeah, I pause. Because what was the thing you'd learn from him? The butt may be made as human.

Well, gosh. So I've been interested in the evolution of the human body and the evolution of human physical activity for a very long time now. Is it just because you look at a human body and you're like, why? Yeah, exactly. I mean, I'm interested in how and why our bodies are the way

they are and the way in which we evolved. OK, so to get to the butt stuff with Lieberman, we have to go back. So many years ago, around 1992, I was, I guess I must have been a postdoc or a grad student at Harvard doing research on, actually it was about pigs. The story starts with a pig on a treadmill. Sorry, just out of curiosity, you were doing this just out of curiosity. I don't think anybody just puts a pig on a treadmill out of curiosity. But it was an experiment to look at how different parts of the skeleton respond to the effects of the loads caused by exercise.

So Daniel said every day he would come into the lab where he had these pigs. Many pigs. Oh, many pigs on a treadmill. Yeah. Cute. He'd put one of them on a treadmill. Many pigs are just the right size, let me tell you. And to keep the pig on the treadmill. You put a box.

And you put a box and turn the treadmill on. And, you know, the pig doesn't like having its butt hit the back. And also the animals like it if you put a mirror in front of them. So weird. So if there's a mirror in front of them, it thinks there's another pig there. And they're kind of much more happy running forever chasing towards their other pig. Yeah, it's it works. So this was Daniel's life.

Many pigs tried mills. Sounds like an exciting thing, but believe me, eventually gets kind of kind of dull. But then one day, you got exciting. A fellow named Dennis Bramble who's a professor at the University of Utah. Now retired. That's Bramble. Mm-hmm. He was on sabbatical at Harvard.

Yeah, I was there for the whole year. To do his own research coincidentally right next to Lieberman. And I heard the sound and turned to his co-researcher. And I said, what the hell is that sound? Somebody doing something there and they said, yeah, and this guy, Dan Lieberman, is running pigs over there. I said, I've got to see this. Eventually he goes next door to Lieberman's lab Lieberman's in there with yet another pig on a treadmill Popped his head in looked at the pig and cocked his head to the side and said to me, you know damn that pig can't hold its head still when it's running It's funny. I you know spent hours watching pigs run on treadmills But I never really thought about it, but oh there it goes. We looked up pigs running on YouTube. Oh

Wow Oh Head still or not? Their heads do kind of flop. So it's a floppy head. Right. Pigs on treadmills, their heads flop in this kind of ungainly manner, like every which way. So anyways, two of them are staring at this mini pig

on a treadmill. It's head bobbing up and down. And Braimble said, you know, Dan, I bet that pigs head is flopping all around because it doesn't have this thing called the Nucoligamin. Nucoligamin? Yeah, the Nucoligament. Nucoligament? Yeah, the Nucoligament, NUC-HAL, and I explained to him that, you know,

it provides support for the head and neck. Okay, so the Nucoligament, it's like a rubber band that attaches to the back of the animal's skull and then runs down its spine and keeps the head straight as it runs. Right, and then I went on to point out that all mammals that are specialized and have evolved as runners.

Everything from cheetahs to leopards to anelopes. Big grazing animals like horses. Down to the tiniest tiniest runners. Jackrabbits among other things, dogs too. They've all got a nucle ligament. All these animals that evolved to run got this ligament to keep their head from flopping around. And the animals that suck at running, they don't have one. Right, pigs don't. Eeps don't. Chips, grillas. They have no they don't have one. Right.

Big stone. Eeps don't. Chimps grillas. They have no nukal ligament. Nothing. They don't really need one because running's not a big part of who they are. But then the weird thing is that humans, well...

Humans have one. Humans have one of these two. We have this ligament. So then I explained to him just very briefly that, at this point Dennis said to Dan, a while back, I had this grad student. Yeah, so, so what? Who wrote this paper about humans and running?

Trying to figure out how breathing fits into locomotion, running and breathing. The paper basically argued that because of how we breathe and a bunch of other things, that running was actually a key part of human evolution, that it was like a really essential part to us becoming human. Yes. And that was exciting. Because it turns out Dan had read that paper, thought it was really interesting.

But I remember having a discussion about it with a professor of mine who basically told me to ignore the paper, it wasn't silly idea, that humans were really suck at running, that were terrible, that were slow, were inefficient, were awkward. And the things that really made us us. It was all about walking and tools and brains. Not running.

There's no real evidence for it. Well, anyway, going back to the pig story. To them in the lab with the pig talking about nuclear ligaments, and Dan was the one who was like, oh wait. One of the very cool things about this ligament is that it leaves a trace on the skull, a sharp ridge in the back of the skull. And so Dan thought, okay, well maybe we could go

to the fossil record, see when this ligament shows up, see if other things show up with it, almost in the same way that when we started walking our bones started changing dramatically, like maybe he could sort of see the same way that like when when we started walking our bones started changing dramatically like maybe like maybe he could sort of see the same thing with running or maybe this ligaments actually just like the equivalent of I don't know that's wisdom teeth like it doesn't really matter. Fortunately we've surrounded by a wonderful museum right there at Harvard full of fossil

cast of of our ancestors and And also lots of butts. There are butts, we're not going to talk about the butts yet. But we'll come back to the butts. For now, Nucle ligaments, ghost searching, looking at skulls of our ancient ancestors. And they first look at a skull from a 7 million year old human ancestor. No Nucle ligament. Nothing.

And then they keep looking at fossils that are... Like, 6 million. 5 million. Nothing, nothing. But then... Sure enough there it is. A little little sharp rich they find a ridge in a skull from around two million years ago There's a new color gamut the skull of our ancestor Homeorectus it doesn't have a snout. It has smaller teeth It's it's the first species that's really very much like you and me from the neck down

And this is sort of like a you're recal moment like a dance as a you reek a moment because from the neck down. And this is sort of like a, like a dance as a eureka moment, because from the neck up, essentially what we're talking about is the brain. The thing that really sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. And when homo erectus first appears, you know, their brains are about half the size of the brains that we have today. What Dan and Dennis would realize, like looking through the fossil record, all doing all sorts of laboratory research, is that from the neck down two million years ago, we got all these adaptations that we still have,

adaptations that seem to be explicitly designed for running. So, for example, take the foot. Almost all animals that run have short toes. If you have long toes in your running, your toes break. And some time around two million years ago, our toes got shorter. Or also, like, four million years ago, our feet were flat. You can have a flat foot and walk very well.

But once you have a flat foot, it's very hard to run. Two million years ago, our feet start to arch. That arch is a spring, and in fact, there are plenty of other springs. Like the Achilles tendon, which is like a centimeter long and it chimpanzee or gorilla With homework rectus it becomes really long a huge spring in your leg also our hips become twisty tall narrow that help us stay stable arms that are really useful for climbing shorter legs longer the inner ear semi-circular canals larger more sensitive to pitching forces

So you can balance better our joints in our knees and our hips get bigger, which are supposed to be able to bear the load of running. And maybe the most important adaptation. The butt. But. So butts are not only beautiful, and they're helping me sit on this chair right now. But the butt is, of course, the largest,

the gluteus maximus, it's technical term, is the largest muscle in the human body. And when we've done electromyographic studies, so yes, I have been paid to put EMGs on the rear ends of people. And we do it very discreetly and very carefully and modestly, but nonetheless, when we do that, what we find is that the Glutius Maximus

fires twice in every stride, and most importantly, and most to prevent the trunk from pitching forward. So every time you hit the ground when you're running, your upper body wants to fall forward. Huh. When I'm running, I'm in a perpetual state of like near falling. That's correct. Running is a controlled fall, very different from walking. And so your gluteus maximus fires just before your body's about, your trunk is about to pitch forward

and make your hit your nose on the ground. And it helps pull your trunk backward. And the other time, the gluteus maximus fires is when your leg is swinging forward, when you're in the air, and it helps decelerate the leg so that you bring your leg down onto the ground. So the gluteus maximus plays a very important role when you're running and turns out to barely be active when you're walking. You don't need the fancy equipment in my lab to figure this out. You can just do this yourself at home, just walk around the room and hold your butt and clench your butt.

When you're walking, your butt will just stay normal. It'll stay kind of... you know, won't really clench up very much. But when you run, you'll feel it, clench up with every step. And it turns out that very nicely, we can see when the gluteus maximus got big in human evolution because it's upper portion, the portion that's really important for this function,

leaves a trace on the pelvis, on the bone. And we can see that chimpanzees and early hominins had a small, chimp-like gluteus maximus. Tiny bun. Tiny bun. Winpy bun. Took them out of the oven too soon. Keep them in the oven. There you go. But as soon as homorectus comes along, you can see that it's really got big. So they must have had big butts like us. Yeah, big buns. But then it's like, got big, so they must have had big butts like us. Yeah, big buns. Hmm. But then it's like, well, why?

Why did this happen? Yeah, like of now butts, new Galigament, everything. Inner-air, yeah, all the stuff. All the stuff. It's just like the whole human body changes all of a sudden. Why? Like, why did we start running? Well, there was climate change.

So the ice age began starting, you know, or if it's turning around 2.8 million years ago, there was climate started changing substantially. and Africa started to dry out. Dan says what happened is forests and jungles turned into grassland habitats and more open habitats. Which quickly filled up with large grass-eating mammals. Herbivores. Like Kudu and Antelope and other large mammals. Saber-toothed tiger or something like that.

That ate those mammals. But unlike other carnivores. Your lions to tiger or something like that. That. Eat those mammals. But unlike other carnivores. Your lions, tigers, cheetahs. We don't have any natural weapons. We don't have claws and fangs. And the kinds of technologies that we think about for hunting were not invented until very recently.

So the bow and arrow was actually invented less than a hundred thousand years ago. And in fact, just pointing a sharpened stone point on a stick, right? So a spearhead. Yeah. That was actually invented less than 500,000 years ago. Really? We had nothing. We had, well, we had pointed wooden sticks, which probably weren't that sharp. We had maybe clubs, you know, we could throw rocks. Great. And we don't have lots of fur to protect ourselves. We sound like the worst equipped animal to deal with. It's climate change. But natural selection often comes up with really interesting solutions. Dan says, imagine your back two million years ago.

Where are we? Well, we might be in a woodland or we might be a savannah. There's a variety of habitats. We'll stick with a savannah. You're out there with your family, friends, clan. We don't really know the group sizes, but probably, you know, 15 to 20 maybe it's not an unreasonable guess. But who knows? You and your group are walking through the tall grasses of the savanna.

You're hungry? And often the distance. You see some wildebeest, and you run after them. But the wildebeest run away faster than you can possibly run. And the Wildebeest will run far away, right, and go hide. But that's okay. You're just gonna keep chasing them. Tracking. Looking for any signs of their trail. And you're not chasing them at a sprint, you're kind of running along at a nice, relaxed endurance pace, like 10 minute miles. And you do this for mile after mile after mile.

But the trick is you find that animal before it's cooled down, because of course the animal would have run away, and when it runs away, it gets hot, like when you're running, generates a lot of heat. And these animals weren't very good at dumping heat. And why can't it dump heat? Because they can't sweat.

Unlike us. Most animals are unable to sweat. So the way they lose heat is by panting. The thing about four-legged animals though is every stride they take when they're running. The guts slam into the diaphragm like a piston, and so when an animal starts galloping, it has to train each breath which each stride, and that prevents it from doing the short little shallow breath. You know, that animals do when they pant. Huh.

And so, dance is what you do is you try to keep this wildebeest sprinting. doing the short little shallow breath, you know, that animals do when they pant. Huh. And so dance is what you do is you try to keep this wildebeest sprinting. So you stay slow and steady, keep moving, just slowly chasing this thing. And slowly over time, you're making it harder and harder and harder. Until at a certain point, after tons of miles,

could be 20, could be 30, you push this animal to the point of exhaustion. At that point, the animal is basically collapsing, right? It's defenses are gone, and they just find a rock and dispatch the animal with a rock. And when you say dispatch, you mean like it, we beat its brains in? That might be what they might do, yeah. Huh.

This is so horrifying. I know it's a terrible way to die, right? Yeah. But once we are able to do this, we were able to become hunters. And of course, hunting gives us access to incredible number of calories. And energy is, well, life is all about energy, basically, the equation of life is, you know, energy's in and babies out, right? So more, you know, that's basically life, right?

Kudu is a lot of calories, which is a lot of babies. So if you can run down an animal like a kudu, you have access to an astonishing energy supply. You also have access to important nutrients. It's not just meat, it's also liver and brain and marrow. These are very rich, important and rare resources that enabled our ancestors to overcome the constraints of that so many animals face. And I think it's one of the reasons that it's after the evolution of hunting begins, that we really see big increases in brain size and human evolution. So brains basically doubled after we started hunting. And of course, to hunt, you can't really hunt

without running. And so running helped us become hunters, and hunting and gathering helped us become the smart intelligent, cooperative creatures that we are today. Yeah, but I gotta say, like, the idea of humans running down animals over these, like, huge distances, like, it just seems. A lot of kind of boggles the mind, right?

Like, it seems impossible. Like, I think I had heard the story before. I think you would probably heard the story before, at least in some part of my life, like runner friend at some point, but I'm like, you know, we're like, I actually remember, do you remember when those toe things came out? And I remember there's this time when people would always be talking about how we were made to run and we were evolved to run and there are groups of people who have historically hunted this way. But even so, there's something about thinking about modern humans, like people like me,

who like sit on the couch and watch Netflix and eat ice cream. I just was like, ah, not me. Yeah. Yeah. So I think there's a part of this that it's like so elegant, but it's also really counterintuitive. It just does not seem possible. So I had been preparing for this conversation

with Lieberman and I had heard this theory and I had said to a few different people, you know. Oh yeah, this guy thinks that you can outrun a horse or something and everyone's like, no, it's not possible. And he was like, well, I have people who don't have time, even I've done possible. And he was like well. I have. People do it all the time. Even I've done it. I've actually done it.

You have run a horse? Absolutely. There's a court, there's a race called Man Against Tours every year in Prescott, Arizona. And two years ago I ran the race. And I ran almost all the horses. And I'm just a middle-aged professor. I'm not particularly fast.

It's kind of like he was saying, you can see this whole theory play out in the desert of Arizona, right? And you and I talked about this. And we were like, it is off to the races. Radio Lab will continue in a moment. Jack, Radio Lab, back to reporters, Matt Kty and Heather Radke, and a race. Which is one of my favorite parts of this whole story.

So in 1983, a city councilman in Prescott comes into this bar in whiskey row, like super old west America, and he gets there he sits down and he has a beer, and down at the end of the bar, there's a couple of cowboys. The city councilman's just run a marathon. And at some point, the city council guy says, I just ran this crazy race. And one of the cowboys says,

my horse could run that far easily. You're not that fast. My horse could do that in an afternoon, wouldn't even break a sweat. And then the city councilman's like, you know, I'm not sure he can. Actually, in fact, I bet I can outrun your horse. And for 30 plus years, they have been sort of seeing who's right. I put in new batteries last night.

Yeah, what the... I am so confused. So while back, you and I flew to Phoenix, we rented a car and drove up to... Prescott? Prescott. Don't say Prescott. No, it's kind of just like high desert country.

Cactuses and scrub and red rocks. Big blue sky. Like super cinematic. It's like, this is the west. Ah, man horse sign, arrow to the right. And we were there to see this race. Nicely homemade, too. It's just a piece of wood.

This man horse in red paint. Born out of this bed. And the race, it's a 50 mile race through the desert. Up this mountain, man against horse. Winner take off. All right, okay. So I mean, we're essentially watching standing in like an open desert plain this mountain man against horse winner take all. All right, okay. So I mean, we're essentially like standing in like an open desert plain.

Everything super flat, a little bit of a valley. Kind of right out ahead of you is this big mountain. That is the mountain that they're gonna climb during the race. Shin high, scrub, scrub grass. We got there for day one. And we go to the check-in table. Hi, Heather, how are you? Let me just, yay. And we met up with Ron Barrett. By the way, Scrum Grass. We got there for day one. And we go to the check-in table. Hi, Heather, how are you?

Let me just... And we met up with Ron Barrett. By the way, I'm Matt. I don't think... I'm Matt, Ron Barrett. Ron Barrett, nice to meet you. He basically orchestrates this whole thing. Paul Guy, bald, got a white goatee.

You meet him and you're like, now that's a good guy. Here we got some nostalgia. Oh, look at that. A bunch of clippings. He was propping up this big poster board. It's just a board that we, you know, over the years, we've taken pictures of back in 83, 85 the early years.

There's a lot of old newspaper photos of horses. So that's the Mojo man, Scott Mojaleski. Runners. A shirtless runner. He was Mojo M.O. And he was the first guy to be with no shirt on Runner's World magazine. Allegedly, but when we were talking to Ron, he won it back in 94. It turns out Daniel's theory is kind of not quite holding up out here.

He won the human... He won the... Yeah, because the headline needs horses again proved to be faster. He won the ball run at that time. Some humans can beat some horses. Did he ever, did he ever end up beating a horse? No, he never did. But no human ever in this race

has outrun the fastest horse. This guy here, he's been the one to come the closest. So in the 36 years that this race has been going, a horse is one every time. And to be honest, it sort of makes sense. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa pony down at the fair or something. They're big. They're muscular. I can never stand that close behind a horse. It's like evolution has made this animal to be like the best running beast on the planet.

So we talked to some of the writers. The horses don't run by themselves. I'm Bruce. I'm Heather. Heather, how are you? I'm really good. You're just running, sweet shit. Good boy. And these people know what they're doing rapping, right? I'm sweet, good boy.

And these people know what they're doing. They've been running endurance races with these horses for a really long time. I'm mad, by the way. I'm at Troy. Troy, nice to meet you. Nice, so one of the guys we ended up talking to for a while was this guy Troy.

Barrel Chester, cowboy hat on, and Troy looked determined. I think of this ride. I don't even worry about who else shows up here to race on the horse race. I just want to beat the runner. Troy's actually been competing in this race, the Man Against Horse Race for the last 13 years, and he's beat a lot of humans.

And so when I see these guys running, I'm like, going, you guys are good. But I'm gonna beat you, don't worry. Yeah. You know? Yeah. We don't have much to do now. Yeah, I still, it's like if I was playing basketball

with the 12 year old, I still want to, I still want to dunk on them, right? You know, we haven't met any of the runners yet. Are they, do they like congregate in some other spot? Or do they them over there? Troy pointed a couple hundred yards over to the other side of this tried out riverbed. The wash, that little wash right there.

Those will be all rolled through our spot. Okay, they're little skinny people. Alright? So here's what we got for the reenactment of the origins of running and humanity. On one side of this wash, standing in for the ancient analogue of the San Gettie, masses of muscle. Bread and train to run. And then on the other side, Subaru's. A small group of maybe eight people wearing micro fiber,

whatever, they just have to like, high tech clothes on, and they're nibbling on like little vegan treats. Quiet reading books. You guys, you guys, the runners? We're with the public radio source WNYC. We do not like public radio. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I know all these superers out here have figured a bunch of public radio hairs. I was a little scared coming over. So for some of them, this is their first time racing a horse.

You know, you're feeling about that. Excited. For a couple of others, they've actually tried before. Of course, I think I'm in, I'm about 10 years old or so. I'll do it and probably take a lot longer, you should. But when we ask them, why are you saying that? Why would you run 50 miles through the desert, competing against a horse? Their answers. I feel like we're kind of comrades out there, just us against the course. We're not exactly encouraging're not... Exactly.

We're not... Exactly. We're not... Exactly. We're not... Exactly. We're not... Exactly.

We're not... Exactly. We're not... Exactly. We're not... Exactly. We're not... Exactly.

We're not... Exactly. We're not... Exactly. We're not... Exactly. Nick. Nick. Nick. Now this kid says he's coming. Nick Cory. We'd actually also heard about him from Ron. He says he wants to come tomorrow and beat the course record.

Oh, wow. I got to, you know, so that's why I'm kind of interested to know how fast this one or the thing is he's going to run, right? Turns out Troy had caught wind of him. But I don't really know. Maybe even sounded a little nervous. But there was no sign of him yet. At this point, it's almost, it's like Sunset.

We need to eat LoSania's cake. And so we head out to our hotel. Yeah, yeah, let's see it right now. Thinking like we're doomed. It just doesn't seem like there's any chance. Um, only other than maybe this guy Nick, like we're doomed. It just doesn't seem like there's any chance. Only other than maybe this guy Nick, day two.

Wake up super early. Oh, the sun's coming up. Whoops, I, the race starts at 6.30 in the morning. Step your six. Race to a race to a race to a race to a race to a race to a race. The horse people are all, the boy. Getting the horses ready. They're settling up their horses,

putting on these fancy horses, they're feeding the horses. And back across the divide. The runners, on finally off, are sort of like, you're ready to go. So did they.

Yeah. Anxiously moving about, stretching. So, but we are immediately looking for Nick. Like, where is he? One of the runners was like, right there, right there. In that ride. Nick's over there. Yeah, he's the one to talk to. And pointed at this little hatchback. And so I went over there with my microphone and my little headphones and he

sort of like popped open the hatchback. Hi, what's your name? Nick, Curry. Nick. We've been here and about you, so I hear. So. Easy on guy, early 30s. A little bit blurry, I... You just get up. Kind of, I slept out here last night, so this is my place to get ready. He slept in the back of his Honda Fit in a sleeping bag.

It easy to just wake up and be here and not the way about driving. And right away, we were like, so are you going for a course record? I'd say it's a possibility. Like I don't like to get ahead of myself. I know what. So he sort of hedged a little bit,

but we didn't actually have that much time to talk to him because the race was about to start. We really go, but yeah. Thanks for talking to us. Yeah, thanks Nick. And so about 10 minutes later. 50 miles, runners checking over here. Ron starts calling people together. 50 miles, runners checking over here. Ron starts calling people together.

50 miles, horse, man. Horse to start arriving. A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha- on the other side of that hill. I had asked Ron if I could run with everybody at the beginning, he was like, sure. You guys all have a good day, huh? It's probably about 20 runners standing there, but it doesn't horse his behind us. And then right about 630 Ron Shouts. All right, there you get horse race. Start right now, here we go. Go.

Yeah. Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Is it easy to get a ball? So all the runners get down into this wash first, come up into this barren desert, and pretty quick. Come, you're right!

Come, the horses. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. Nick was up ahead of me. The horses take off in a cloud of dust and you kind of cop it up a bit, but then settle and. I mean, while Troy... As soon as Ron says go, I'm thinking hall ass. Troy is like, can't help me now, it's there. It's like a hundred yards ahead of anybody.

It's quickly as we could. You can see dust coming up behind his horse. How was your horse feeling out of the gate? Oh, it was good. I, on the other hand. You were the whole race, that thing? Oh god, no. No, I've gone like a quarter mile coming back.

You're lucky, y'all. It was kind of crazy running out there with them and how like everything was going exactly like Dan Scenario on the Serengeti with the Aniloper. In this case, the horse like taking off the human eating dust for the moment. But like Nick, when we talked about this, he said, as he watches the horses speed off into the distance.

The first thing I think is I will see you later. It's just like, don't worry about the horse's holiness. Focus on the race. Slow and steady. Am I running the right pace? Am I eating at the right time? Slow down. If you need to let your body adjust, find your rhythm. Whatever I need to do to keep going steady. Meanwhile,

Troy is hauling ass through the desert. Somewhere between 14 miles per hour and 18 miles per hour. Now, we should point out that there are a couple things about this race that are not like the ancient hunt. For one, over these 50 miles, the horses have to stop three different times at these things called vet checks. So it's a requirement of any kind of official endurance ride that when the horse gets to a certain point, the horse's stopped and a vet checks them.

They just want to make sure the horse is okay before they let it keep going with the race. Which is good because what that means is that the horses don't sprint themselves to death like they would on the savannah. But it also eats up an hour and 15 minutes where the horse is stopped and the human is still running, which would be like, okay, great, the humans, Nick have this sort of unfair advantage to catch up. But it actually puts the human at a disadvantage in this race because in the end, when Ron calculates the final scores for the humans and the horses,

he subtracts the horse hold times from the human racer scores. So the human has to beat the time the horse would have run if it hadn't stopped. But I felt sluggish probably the first 10 miles or so and so you know I'm kind of second guessing myself like you know is this gonna go away or is this gonna blow up and then I'm gonna have to drop from the race you know halfway through or something. But keeps chugging along, dragging myself and using it. And then Troy still hauling ass at mile 16 trots into vet check one.

And we actually got into the vet check exactly when I had planned to get in, which was right around 8, 15, 8, 30 in the morning. So he hopped up his horse, took a saddle off, taken the heat load off in the saddle pad. Got his horse and water, the vet came over when pretty much I didn't know where. Oh shit. Nick came running through.

I could see horses that are being examined by the vets. I didn't see a whole lot more than that because I was in and out of it really quick. He looked good too. I'm finally warming up, trying to more or less push it. I hadn't seen a guy, Matt, race, anything close to as fast as he was. So Nick takes off and then after Tweenman hold Troy comes flying out of the vet check marking the miles as they go by 17-18 wondering when

you're gonna see the front runner. I'm feeling more loose but I'm starting to feel fatigue setting in. I don't feel fresh anymore. But he says he tells himself, okay, you don't need to push yourself any faster. Just keep going steady. The horses are gonna come catch me at some point. I've just gotta keep steady and hold myself together so that I'm gonna have more left later on. Meanwhile, Troy is hauling out of that check, stepping on the gas until he gets to. The backside of Mingus Mountain.

The big climb. Nick. My legs are burning. Nick's only a few miles ahead, hitting the steep part of the climb. My hands are on my knees, kind of using them, almost like hiking poles to push off every footstep. You know, climbing like it's a boulder. I was really like,

I expected a horse to pass me at any moment. And while all of this was going on, I can't see anything. We were lost on the mountain. I don't love that. What is, oh my God. That's us almost driving off a cliff. Oh, holy f***.

Even now my hands are sweating and remembering it. But yeah, so we had gone to look for the first vet check. Ah, ah, ah. We had gotten totally turned around and we were on this mountain that was just treacherous, like awful. And I just remember thinking, like, how do you run up this thing?

Or with a horse? I mean, both of them. Yeah. But then so we finally find our way off the mountain, circle all the way back around the mountain, go back up the top and we go to a different checkpoint. Ron told us he's like, you can get to this checkpoint, you'll be there in time, nobody should be up there.

Oh yeah, this is it. And this is the checkpoint that's at the top of the climb. We found it! Oh! I didn't do it, it would ever happen. All right, it's at the peak of the mountain. Mile 32. There's no fear, NPR here.

It's just a small gravel parking lot. It's like a look-up point. There's about six volunteers there. Yeah, we're with the Jeep Posse Search Rescue. They all walkie talkies. They were getting updates from other checkpoints on the course. And they told us that the first beast we were gonna see was a horse.

Yeah, they're just about to come roar through here, so. Because that's what had always happened before. Horses always come up the mountain first. And then you, is it? Grab me and you're like, you should come look at this view. I mean, you're gonna see. Go look. Whoa!

Oh my God. Isn't it like the most beautiful thing you've ever seen? That's incredible. It's this huge green valley that runs all the way to these beautiful red cliffs. This is crazy. Like, they come up there. These horses and humans climb up this essentially like a sheer face of a mountain.

I can't believe they come up this way. I guess they're gonna be a little further just seeing trucking their way up here and you'll hear them coming. It's like very steep. I just have no idea where the trail is. So we kind of just were sitting around waiting for like a sign.

the trail is. So we kind of just were sitting around waiting for like a sign. When all of a sudden one of the volunteers just shut it out. Runner coming. Runner coming? Yes. Runner. Runner before a horse. Runner and Lee. They do it. Out of nowhere coming from this tiny little trail into this parking lot. Nick just appears. And he looked like he looked good. He just kind of seemed chill. So I caught up alongside of him. Try to keep pace with you for a minute. Okay, you're out ahead. Yeah, that's a good sign I suppose. Yeah, I think I'm feeling pretty good about that. How do you feel so far in general? Not too bad. I mean, that was the toughest part. I had a high quite a bit of that climb. Oh really? Straight up hiking. Yeah, it's like 1500 feet of climbing and I don't know like a mile, mile and a half.

I'm not like a mile mile and a half. So it's a steep, steep climb. Yeah. But yeah, now it's all pretty much downhill from here. So that should be good. How you doing for pace? I'm not happy with where I'm at. I'm just running hard but comfortable. Okay.

I don't know where that compares to. The record or anything. Not too worried about it yet. We ran together for four minutes. I'll leave you to it. Awesome. Good luck. Thanks. Oh my god.

He's been doing that. For 33 miles. Bethan's in. What happened? Yeah, I ran with him for a little bit. I'm so dead. Not a horse? No horse yet.

Huh. There still wasn't a horse. 20 minutes go by. And then all of a sudden we hear another runner. Another runner coming. Another runner coming. Then a third runner. Hey, it's going to be a nice and see ya.

Not a single horse still. They're coming out. Not a single horse still. They're coming. Yeah. Coming up, the horses. Stay tuned. Yeah. Jet, mat, radio, lab. And today, a story as old as time,

man versus animal, or more specifically human versus horse. And when we left off, there were three runners in the lead and coming up behind them. So then finally, there's a horse. In fact, there's two horses. There's these two women riders who kind of emerge out of the trail. But there's no Troy. Yeah, there's no sign of Troy. And this is how I remember it. Like we'd heard something had happened. And we're back down the trail and the horn stumbled and fell.

That a rider had gone down. Did I hear a name? But no one knew who. And then we ended up finding out that in fact, we caught a rock and went down and Troy around mile 26 or so. He and his horse caught a rock. Toe catchers, he called it. He and the horse both fell, yeah. Which sort of, you know, to a large extent ended my day.

And they were okay, but the idea of winning was completely gone. But there were these writers, Suzy and MJ, who we'd also heard actually, I think we're like top writers. We have won lots of races, and so they had a pretty good shot of winning too. Suzy and MJ, who we'd also heard actually, I think we're like top writers. We have one lots of races and so they had a pretty good shot of winning too. And we're like, okay, we'll follow them. So we drove a mile down the road to vet check two. We're trying to figure out. We knew Nick was ahead, but the question was, was he ahead enough in order to win the race?

Like these horses could still finish after him, but still beat him. So we walk into this vet check. It's in this little wooded area. And you go and you start talking to people and then when we were coming in, I ask, I'm one of the volunteers. We're doing good. How are you doing? Not bad. Did the front runner come through? If Nicky come through and he was just like, oh yeah.

No, he is really moving. Because we want to make sure we don't miss him at the finish line. Do you know what he, you know what he was just like, oh yeah. Oh, he is really moving. Because we want to make sure we don't miss him at the finish line. Do you know what he might get in, you think? We look at a map and we realize that Nick is running a seven minute mile. So if you're trying to get there to catch him,

you're not going to have a lot of time. We decided that I'd stay behind and talk to the horse people and you'd go ahead and try to get to the finish line. OK, but I'll be in touch. So I drove very fast down the mountain trying to catch Nick. Who is just getting to the bottom of the mountain? I'm winding down the trail. It's steep, it's rocky.

Making sure I'm picking up my feet, not gonna catch a toe on a rock or anything like that. Do whatever it takes to keep my body upright. For the whole first part of this race, Nick's mindset is like only live in this moment. Don't let yourself think about the end. Don't let yourself have a lot of feeling or emotion, but then here at the end, after 40 miles.

I, I, I almost start to let a panic take over me. For the first time in the whole race, all the emotions that he's been repressing and pushing down. I let it all come in on me. You let that hit you and you let that excitement hit you and you let that adrenaline and you know fear and you know everything else kind of a huge mix of emotions. All Russian and you let yourself experience like the fullness of every single emotion all at once and you hit that height. I was I

just started running basically as hard as I could, faster and faster, and I almost build this momentum of nothing can stop me from getting to that finish line. I hit that last half mile where I can see the finish banner, I can see the finish line. Tears started welling up as I'm running in, and the emotion just completely overcome me as I cross the finish line. So I got back down to like the base camp. Got out of the car and started making my way over to the finish line and then I just saw him standing there. You was surrounded by a bunch of people. Did you do it? Yeah. 614.

You was surrounded by a bunch of people. Did you do it? Yeah, 14 614 a Go he's not in yet. I don't have to go up there 614 shit I just can't believe you're my favorite runner. I ever tell you that But really what everybody wanted to know, how much film didn't it beat the horse? Was did Nick win-win? Like for the first time in the history of this race,

did a human beat the horse? And so what they do is they have this banquet later where they actually give out the awards and announce everybody's time. They get a nice big fat winner's buckle. The winner gets a fat winner's buckle. The winner gets a really cool belt buckle. So the way it works is that Ron announces

the winners by category. So in third place, we're starting with the top three runners. Pete Mardemur. He announces third place and then second place. And then he gets to... All right, here we go. Here's the big one. Really big, really big.

Nick. Really big show here. Nick Cory. Woo! Nick Cory won this course, won the race in time of 614. Woo! Woo! He won the course outright by beating the horse

by over an hour and 15 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Albright by beating the horse by over an hour and 15 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Nick walks up, Ron Hansen, the sterling silver belt buckle. 6-14 with the man against horse logo on it.

Unbelievable. It's never been done before where a runner is actually beat the horse with the whole times. Yeah. In the story of ancient man, this would be the moment where you get to eat your bone marrow. You catch up to the gazelle and you bash it over the head and break open its bones. And while it's like just slowly breathing on the ground in front of you. He's like, that's not my bag. That's your guy's thing. slowly breathing on the ground in front of you. He's like, that's not my bag. That's your guy's thing. I guess it's maybe like the old adage comes to mind.

It's not about the destination, it's about the journey. I want it to be something like that. I guess I always found it fascinating how it seems so obvious that a race is about the end. Right. But everybody we talked to was like, it's not about the end. And maybe they were just sort of like, maybe that's like the good sportsman thing to say.

Maybe that's kind of like how you get yourself through it. But I guess that's sort of to the point is like the only way you can run a race like this. The only way you can really run 50 miles is to think about it mile by mile instead of imagining that the end is the goal. Right. You have to go just step by step. You have to keep steady. It's like we're not just evolved to get to the end. We evolved to endure the whole process. If you run, this kind of makes sense. Daniel Lieberman, the guy who, in a way, kind of set us off on this whole journey. I mean, there's a point when, you know,

running is not easy. Everybody when you start to run all of us, even the world's best runners, the first mile or so are never easy. But there's a point in every run when things get better and you kind of realize or feel your body's really good at this. And I think we were, we kind of helped people understand how and why that is, and also helped people understand

why it is that so many of us enjoy running, and why millions of people run marathons, and why, you know, when I walk out the door and go to the river here, I see thousands of people running along the Charles River. We wouldn't be who we are today if it weren't for running. It's part of who we are. Right. So did you guys go to Man Against Horse?

We did. We went. Yeah. It was crazy. It was crazy. Because the guy, I mean, I don't know if you've heard this year, but the guy who won won by a lot. Yeah. He beat the horses.

Yeah. Yeah. I just love that he's like, yeah, because to Lieberman, to Lieberman, that's not a surprise. Yeah, it's like this is who we are and what we've been doing. This is what we've been doing since two million years ago out on the Serengeti. Like Nick did what we were born to do.

Yeah, so I don't buy into that scenario. Oh, wow. Wow. It's not the, I'm sorry. No, no, no, I'm just, I mean, there's no surprise that Danny knows about, we argue about it, right? Again, this is Daniel Lee-Rumman's collaborator, Dennis Bramble. So I don't think it's plausible, really, that the earliest stages of running and the things

that promoted running could be persistence hunting, which is what that strategy is, where you run something in the heat and it overheats ultimately, and you walk up and hit it over the head with a rock. We should say that this is a way that some people in the world still hunt. It's a strategy that can work, but Bramble doesn't think it's the first strategy we had for getting meat. It's a really demanding thing, and it takes takes hours and it takes tracking ability usually. I think that's something that came later after running was pretty well established. To me,

it makes a lot more sense that it began in something which has been called aggressive scavenging, taking advantage of real predators and trying to rip off the meat before other things start moving in and haul it off. Brambles, like, you get there and there's a chance to eat some of it. And the thing is you're competing against all sorts of different scavengers, you're competing against the vultures,

hyenas, leopards, leopards, even like the animal that killed the animal. Yeah, so in Bramble's theory, you need to run to be able to get there before, basically all the other animals in the Savannah picket clean. Right, they have to get there fast because the faster you get there,

the more of the carcasses left. I see. Yeah. I will say that your theory is far less noble and exciting. Oh yeah. No, no. So the rest of your strength commitment. Yours is like, hey, we figured out vultures over there. Let's just go see what we can pick off this dead animal That's something else like spend all the time killing and we will and we will be is bad ass as we can be when we get over there To scare off those other guys. No, it's it's a totally

Non-glorious it makes us into vultures. It makes us it makes our entire species. It just makes us into opportunists. Yeah. I feel like maybe I buy a knee or... I know, it is pretty compelling, I have to say. Well, that makes sense. It's not sexy. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha questions, are we lions or are we vultures? That's essentially what it is. Are we lions or are we vultures? But I guess the beautiful thing about it is like, either way, no matter what.

We got there because of our butts. Is that where you were going? No matter what, it's all about the butt. Reporters, Heather Ratke and Matt Kielty. I'm Chad Ibu Murad, thanks for listening. Hey, this is a producer Matt Kilti running near my mom's house in Arizona. And just very quickly, this episode was produced by me with Rachel Kusik and Simon Adler. We had original awesome music, sound design mixing from Jeremy Bloom, this episode was fact-checked by Dory Shevlin, special thanks to Tamiganian,

Abby Swift, and everybody at Manningham's horse. And also really quick you want to say, both Dennis and Daniel made a point of the fact that a lot of their early theories about humans and endurance running were informed by one of Dennis's students, the guy who wrote that paper, his name is Dave Carrier and Quintanentley, Dave's brother is a man named Scott Carrier who if you listen to public radio you might recognize the name, it has had great work on this American life, also wonderful podcast called Home of the Brave. Anyways, back in 1998, Scott did this sort of like seminal story about his brother's work trying to chase down an amelope and a whole

lot of things. Anyways, it just felt important to acknowledge about them. And yeah, that's about it. important to acknowledge about them. And yeah, that's about it. This is terrible. Oh wait, oh there's the horse. Radio Lab was created by Chad Abhamrod and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Lachif Nazar are our co-hosts. Dylan Heath is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Pressler, Rachel Kusik, Aketty Foster Keys, W. Hayforthuna, David Gabel, Maria Pascutieres, Sindunyana Sambandam, Matt Kilti, Annie McEwan, Alex Nisen, Saurikori, Anna Vaskuhitbaz, Sarah Sandback, Erin Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster,

with help from Sajikita Gimomoki. Our fact-checkers are Dian Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton. Hi, this is Beth from San Francisco. Leadership support for Radiolab Science Programming is provided by the Board and Embedding More Foundation, Science Sandbox, Assignment Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundation will support Brewaydeal Labs was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

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