SciShow Tangents - Running

Episode Date: January 21, 2020

From diet, to shoes, to movement efficiency, people devote their lives to researching and perfecting the art of running. Meanwhile, cheetahs run 75 mph and they sleep all day. No fair! Ceri caught a plane to run a marathon right after we recorded this! I probably went home and watched TV for four hours. Oh well! Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions!  While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Stefan: @itsmestefanchin Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @slamschultz Hank: @hankgreen If you want to learn more about any of our main topics, check out SciShowTangents.org!

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive knowledge showcase starring some of the geniuses that make the YouTube series SciShow. This week, as always, I'm joined by Stephan Chen. I have joined us. How you feeling, buddy? I'm a little under the weether. Stephan, what's your tagline? Chex Mixed Throat. Sam's also here. Hi, Sam Schultz. Hi. When was the last time you touched a basketball? Have you ever touched a basketball? Shut up. I don't know the last time I touched a basketball. They're not everywhere like they

were when you were kids. Yeah. They used to be around. Now they're not so much anymore. Only 90s kids remember basketballs. What's your tagline? Born in the desert, raised in a lion's den. Sari, can you do your best Mickey Mouse impression? Oh, I'm okay at it. I love that.

I can't look. Okay, go. Oh, boy. That was pretty good. pretty good sure yeah those are the two most important mickey mouse words that's it all i know is when i was doing the duck voices for scishow kids sam was like less mickey mouse more duck oh what's your tagline less mickey mouse can i say that yeah okay i don't know if he's gonna to be litigious if they hear the name. But you can't say the word Super Bowl, right? Oh, really?

You can't say the big game. The big mouse. Mickey is the biggest mouse. Like, not only, like, culturally, but actually physically. Have you seen him? He's a huge mouse. Chuck E. Cheese might be able to take him. I don't know. What about Master Splinter?

Master Splinter is a rat. There's canonically taller mice than Mickey in Mickey's universe, though. Mortimer Mouse, for instance. Oh, well, thanks. I'm really glad that we know about the taller Mortimer Mouse. I'm Hank Green, and my tagline is, too many

big mice. Every week here on SciShow Tangents, we get together to try to one-up a maze and delight each other with facts about the world. We're playing for glory, and we're also keeping score with sandbox. We do everything we can to stay on topic, but we don't actually. So if you tangent,

and we don't like it, we can dock you a sandbox. So tangent with care, and now, as always it, we can dock you a sandbook. So tangent with care. And now, as always, we introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem this week from Sari. One foot in front of the other, another, lost track of the steps. Oh, that song my brother played on rock band one time. Is that a hill I have to climb? Breathe in, feel it great in my throat. Breathe out, want to shout or sit down. I'm beginning to doubt whether this is the route, but it must be the route. Lost track of the miles and years and seconds these legs can hold steady through my 20s i reckon i don't have a plan but they can they can that was great that was a very

what it's like to run polo one of the things that i used to think about running is that it was too much aerobic work for me where i'd be like my i'm breathing very hard this is hard on my like lungs and heart now though running as i've gotten older is too much like physical moving my legs around work is it the impact or is it just like just lifting my leg over and over and over again my legs get tired in a way that didn't used to happen. Wait till you hear my fact today. Okay. I'm fascinated to hear it. The topic is running.

Sari, what is running? It's basically that. Moving your feet at a pace that's faster than a walk. It seems very subjective. There's no scientific definition well there is the the limit of walking so there's olympic speed walking or fast walking or whatever where there's like you can't have both feet off the ground at the same time yeah the both feet leaving the ground feels like a key part of it yeah the intent of covering distance specifically

both feet leaving the ground with an intent to go faster than normal. I feel like if you had most people, there's probably an average pace where someone's like, that's no longer walk, that's jogging, and that's no longer jogging, that's running. Oh, right, because there's jogging. Jogging's running, though. I think jogging is running. Yeah, no, I've never run.

If jogging is separate from running, I've never run since childhood. And you are a runner, yes? Asterisk! I run from running, I've never run since childhood. And you are a runner. Yes. Asterisk. I run. Yeah.

I mean, yeah. You're more of a runner than... Have you done a marathon? Yes. You are in the top some small number of percent. Yeah. I guess I can make my body run. I don't think I'm very good at it.

Like researching for this episode of the podcast i learned so many things that i maybe should have known about my feet and body beforehand because i don't do the diet right do you like running no but there must be people who do yes okay so there are people who have described like i i feel the runners high i feel like invigorated when i run i do not feel that i feel pain and tiredness but i can make myself do it for a really long time and i get the dopamine hit from finishing and being like i don't have to do that again i can rest i can not i can be not doing that oh well then you could do that with any unpleasant activity for a long period of time i'm really good at doing unpleasant things for a medium to long amount of time do you

know the etymology of run because it seems to have come first from the kind of running where things run, like flow into each other, like run together. Yes, that's what I have too. It's like German rinnen, Gothic rinnen. This is me pronouncing things again.

Middle Dutch runnin'. And basically, yeah, all old languages, it seems to describe rivers or something like that. That is my guess. It's got a nice trill. Run.

Well, it doesn't even say it that way. So I guess now it is time for Truth or Fail. One of our panelists, it's me, has prepared three science facts for your education and enjoyment. But only one of those facts is real. The rest of you have to guess which is the truth and which are the lies and if you get it right you get a sandbuck if you don't it's for me and we're gonna do it about our favorite way to run where you don't go anywhere treadmills love them so they actually this is the, this is just a normal true thing. They have a fairly dark history. They were actual torture devices in English prisons.

Oh, my. Maybe the first treadmills. But now treadmills are just a great way to run without going anywhere, which is very convenient if you live in a place where it's terrible outside, which we do. But treadmills can play tricks on our brains, and scientists have thus used treadmills to try and learn things about our brains. The following are three treadmill experiments that were designed to help us learn about our minds, but only one of those experiments is real. Number one, subjects were put on a treadmill, but where you might usually expect the treadmill to be on the ground, this treadmill was was on a trailer and it was hooked up to a tractor that pulled it along

so that so that the runner was going as fast as they would have been if they were actually running and then afterward they were blindfolded and shown targets and told to walk to the targets to see if they had accurately judged the distance. Number two, subjects were tasked with using a treadmill while watching a 10-minute long video, so running and watching a video, and then they came off the treadmill and they were asked to jog blindfolded while answering questions about the video to see if they were better at answering questions while running than not running. Or fact number three. Subjects were instructed to run as fast as they could for three minutes. Either in front of them was a blank wall or a variety of videos on a screen.

One of those videos was a trainer egging them on. One of them was a stadium full of people cheering, one of them was a music video for a dance song, and one was just footage of cute cats. The video of the dance song had people running the fastest, but strangely

cute cats and the blank wall both did better than the trainer yelling at you. So our facts are the treadmill was pulled along by a tractor to keep them actually running the speed they would be running. Number two, you run and watch a video on a treadmill and then you run off the treadmill to see if you can remember what happened in the video. And three, you run as fast as you can for three minutes watching various videos or nothing. And the music video was the one that made people go the fastest.

And the trainer was the slowest. Now, after having run, I just want to participate in running experiments. This is like my next step in my running. Finally. Yeah. Finally, I'm useful. You're just going to be a test subject. Yeah, I used to do sleep studies in college to earn money.

And so I can do this. Oh, man. Literally earn money while you sleep. Yeah, it used to do sleep studies in college to earn money. So I can do this. Oh, man. Literally earn money while you sleep. Yeah, it's great. You just wear bracelets and they track personal information. People are doing for free these days with their Google Home and stuff. Right.

Do you think it's plausible that the person yelling at you would make you run slower than any of the rest of them? Yes. make you run slower than any of the rest of them yes but also speaking from personal experience the cheering crowd and the person yelling at me would make me do worse just because like any attention any attention if you're paying attention to me i do worse at whatever sport to the point where my fencing coach would be like everyone turn away while i'm doing it seriously for you for me yeah like he would be like the, okay, let's talk and not watch Sari, and then she'll do better. Mostly, I just want to put, so you have the runner on a treadmill, treadmill on a tractor that's moving, but the tractor's also on a treadmill, so no one is moving. I'm not sure what the science behind this would be. It's just a glorious waste of energy.

The science behind this would be... It's just a glorious waste of energy. I don't believe that for everybody getting yelled at on the screen would make them do bad. Because for me, when I do videos, like if I do like a workout video or like do it in a class or something, I do better. I know that I do. Like I give up if it's just me by myself. What was the middle one? You watch a 10-minute video while running and then you run again to see if you can answer the questions better. Sometimes I do an exercise bike that

has a video on it of you going through like a French countryside and I could go to that French countryside and know where everything was. I'm pretty sure that's that house. That's that house. So I think I'm going to go with that one. I think I've retained that place like better than shows and movies I've watched like an equal amount of times. You feel more at home in the French countryside of that biking program than in the streets of Missoula. Definitely. That's interesting because I watch a lot of HGTV when I run on the treadmill and I don't remember any of it. So I'm the opposite of that.

I'm going to pick the last one because I would like to think that other people are as afraid of trainers as I am. Huh. I was going to think that other people are as afraid of trainers as I am. Huh. I was going to go with the last one. That's one of those things where like the thing that you look at, I bet if you did a bunch, if you repeated that study a bunch of times, you would just get different results with different people or something. Because the fact that the blank wall did better, I'm like, like some people might maybe they do better when they just have,

they can focus on their own mind or something. I don't know. This is hard. And in my heart, I know it's number one. But I'm still going to go with number two. I'm going to spread things out. So I'm going to go with number one. And it was number one.

Trailer treadmill. So the reason they did this is that there's this weird optical phenomenon or like a weird sort of illusion that happens. It's called optical flow, where when usually you're like moving through the world and you move and the world moves past you. But on a treadmill, you run and then everything stays in the same place. And sometimes after you get off a treadmill treadmill you'll have this experience of like feeling like you're walking faster than you are actually and so they wanted to understand this effect better they wanted to see if it was like the the world moving past you that was the thing or if it was the not moving that was the thing so they had you run on the treadmill but then had you

at the same time move as fast as you would be moving and there's actually a diagram of this that i have to show you it's beautiful it's like you're following a tractor on a like a weird lawnmower what about all the fumes weren't there fumes i don't know he said electric so it allowed the experimenters to tune the walking speed via the treadmill and the speed of the optic flow which was the rate of the speed of the tractor and when the walking speed was greater than the optic flow rate their brains are in the mode of thinking they need to walk more to cover a certain distance so the blindfolded subjects then tended to overshoot the targets and when the walking speed was less than the optic flow, they tended to undershoot the target. Always go for the weird experiment, you guys.

No, because sometimes it's fake. The last one was just an outright lie. Scientists may have done this where they show you a screen and see what encourages you to run the most. In my internal canon, I decided it was Ponder Replay by Rihanna that they were playing because that seems like a really good running song.

And then the second was based on an experiment that they did to see if people worked better at treadmill desks or worse. And there doesn't seem to be a huge difference in sort of like information comprehension ability. But there is a difference if you were doing a physical activity like medical transcriptionists. But there is a difference if you were doing a physical activity, like medical transcriptionists, like typing out transcriptions while walking was slower than just sitting and typing. Because like your upper body is moving some and that affects how fast you can type, I guess. But I was looking at productivity, not like the long-term health consequence. Yeah. Well, look, what are we more worried about?

The short-term productivity of our workers or their long-term health outcomes you got me you got me i also like that as someone who types for her job that i get an excuse now i can cite this one study and be like i need to sit i need like a comfy couch where everything is still except for my hands that's right i need to move not at all yeah Yeah. Next up, we're going to take a short break, and then it'll be time for the Fact Off. Welcome back.

Sam Buck totals for the episode. Sari has one for her poem. Stefan has one for getting that treadmill question right. Sam's got nothing and I got two. I quit. You'll be okay. Because now it's time for the fact off, where two panelists, Sam and Stefan,

have brought science facts to present to us in an attempt to blow our minds. We each have a Sambuc to award the fact we like the most. Who's going to go first? It's going to be decided by this question. The cheetah is the fastest land animal, so therefore the fastest runner. What is the second fastest runner in the world? A. Lion.

B. Blue wildebeest. C. Pronghorn antelope or d the quarter horse oh god one two three whatever the last one is it is the pronghorn stephan you are correct yeah all right sam oh making sam go first like you just said the fastest land animal is the cheetah in terms of raw miles per hour. It can go 75 miles an hour. But when you take scale into account, there are lots of animals that are faster than a cheetah. Well, there's also land animals that are faster than a cheetah. Like what?

They're just birds. Okay. But when you take scale into account, Hank, there are lots of animals that are faster. Or if they're birds. there are lots of animals that are faster or if they're birds the fastest insect for example is the cisindella hudsoni a species of tiger beetle native to australia and i'm just going to call them tiger beetles from now on thanks they run at five miles an hour which is 171 body lengths a second for them the fastest humans on earth like usain bolt top out at six body lengths a second so if a person wanted to cover as much ground as a tiger beetle does proportionally,

they'd have to run 480 miles an hour. I feel like that would break you. You'd probably disintegrate. Up until 2014, these insects were thought to just be the fastest land animal in the world, but their record got broken by a mite that can go 322 body lengths a second, which is 1,300. Is it a jumper? I think it's a jumper. The tiger beetle's a runner. I think this mite

is a jumper. But that's 1,300 miles an hour for a human. You'd definitely also explode if you were going that fast, too. It depends on how fast you got to the speed. It's the acceleration that would kill you. I think it's instantaneous for both of them.

It's instantaneous. Then it would definitely, from zero to 1,000 miles per hour in 0.00 seconds, you would explode. The parts of you that were less hard would be less behind. You'd just be a running skeleton.

So they're still the fastest insect, because the other thing's an arachnid, and they're predators, so they use their speed to catch their prey. When scientists observed them chasing prey, however, they thought it was weird that the beetle stopped and started instead of just ran in a straight line and got what it was after.

So a scientist named Cole Gilbert looked into it and determined that at top speed the beetle runs so fast that its eyes can't collect photons quickly enough to be able to see the prey running away from it so it has to stop it stops for a few milliseconds sees where the prey is triangulates where it's supposed to be runs to try to catch it if it doesn't catch it it stops looks where its prey is and just keeps doing it's supposed to be, runs to try to catch it. If it doesn't catch it, it stops, looks where its prey is, and just keeps doing it until it gets it.

These boys are beautiful. They're really kind of scary, and I didn't like looking at them. I'm watching one eat a bug right now, and it is... Their pincers are freaky. I would not like to be small around it, for sure. So that's pretty much the end. They run so fast that they can't see anymore. Oh, I love it. And he thinks pretty much the end. They run so fast that they can't see anymore.

And he thinks that there are other animals that go so fast that they can't see anymore like peregrine falcons and lots of different kinds of fish, but there's not as much research done into them yet. The way that this thing moves is hilarious. It just can't not be fast. Everything it does

is just like... Do things like that get muscle tiredness? Is that a thing? Yeah, I mean, you gotta run out of fuel. I don't know if they get tiredness the same as us,

but like eventually you just don't have the glycogen to do the things. Can a bug work out and get buffer or not? I'm just gonna let that one sit. Okay. Oh my God,

they're so fast. I love it. Some good YouTube videos of these things, guys. Oh, my God. They're so fast. I love it. Some good YouTube videos of these things, guys. There's tons of good YouTube videos of them. Stefan. When you're running, a lot of the calories that you burn are being used to maintain the balance of your body and support your body weight and accelerate and decelerate your body's mass. Like when you are jumping from one foot to the you're there's a lot of up and down motion and like you have to decelerate you gotta get that leg it's all the way back here i gotta

get it up there and then i gotta bring it back again a team of engineers at stanford found that if you connect a runner's shoes with a rubber band which they call an exotendon but it's basically a piece of surgical like silicone tubing that has carabiners on the end and they like connect your shoes together that that reduces all these extra energy costs by making it easier for a runner to take more steps per minute. Basically having an elastic band

that connects your shoes helps slow your legs down when they're moving apart and then it helps snap them back together. You got to decelerate it yourself, and you got to accelerate, but this way, it's like an exotendon. Yeah, it's just like an exotendon.

They said it's similar to the tendons in cheetahs' legs, which are, as we learned, the fastest land animals. And so having that extra force or extra assistance helps make it easier to swing your legs faster so you can take more steps per minute and as a side effect of doing that your steps are shorter and having shorter steps means that you're not doing as much of the up and down and you don't have to spend as much energy decelerating and accelerating your body mass in other ways that are not related to just like moving forwards and so in the main part of the experiment

they ran four tests with 19 people at six miles an hour and in the first test there was no improvement because people were just like confused about like how to run improvement is is kind of remarkable yeah you're like we're gonna put a giant rubber band on your feet with some carabiners but by the end of the fourth test all 19 participants had adjusted naturally to the faster stride frequency and were running more efficiently so you just have to like give in to the to the rubber band and like let it control your legs a little bit yeah and then they ran a test with a band that was like not that elastic or was much less stiff to make sure that this wasn't like some kind of placebo effect of like attaching a band. And then people are like, yeah, I am fast. And they also ran some outdoor tests to make sure that people wouldn't trip.

And no one did. No one tripped? So it's super safe. It's so dangerous. Yeah, we're outdoors. In the forest, you would 100% trip over a rock. Oh, true. Yeah, they didn't do trail running.

It was all like on the sidewalks. Right. What about like fast people, though? They tested it at over 10 miles an hour also for the tripping. They wanted to make sure that people could run fast. And the tubing is like 25% the length of your leg. So it's not that long. And they found that that was a good mix to give you the elasticity but not trip you up.

So you're just like... So you're running, instead of 90 steps per minute, you're going at 100 steps per minute. Wacky. Sounds like a Sonic the Hedgehog power-up you would get. They could license it, maybe. But overall, they found that on average, people were 6.4% more efficient at running with the tendon on which doesn't sound like a ton but that's on par with other devices that are designed for increasing running efficiency but all the other devices are like super complicated and expensive like there's fancy shoes that have springs in them and there's a bunch of like

exoskeletons that have motors or springs to help you move. They also mentioned jetpacks as an alternative. But I was like, at that point, you're not really running. Yeah, no, I could also go faster if I was in a car. I want to jetpack through a marathon now. That's it. I will not move my legs one bit. Well, I was thinking

about this as like, oh, but like it's not allowed. Like, you're not going to compete with these compete with sometimes you need to run fast for reasons that aren't just it's like if someone's gonna attack you you're like wait let me put my ex-attended on just like war people like if you're gonna be on the bat it's like suddenly it's like well it would definitely help the war people to be able to go 6.8 percent faster yeah yeah you can market it as a toy and then get a bunch of kids to start running more Well, it would definitely help the war people to be able to go 6.8% faster. Yeah, yeah.

You could market it as a toy and then get a bunch of kids to start running more efficiently. Yeah. Like the new Heelys. Yeah. So they can get away from their parents. Slow the kids down. Well, then you just do it like, I don't know, 20 or 15% of their legs so their free kids are afraid enough.

Yeah. Little bands. Shackles. That's a great idea. 20 or 15 percent of their legs so they're free kids yeah little bands shackles and then you can attach a chain to them and just like walk around with your child on a leash it's fun and then you can attach multiple kids together so that they don't lose each other in line. Great, great. We can call it a chain gang. It's everything. No problem.

Do you know who you want to vote for? Oh, it's hard. Yes, I do. You do? Three, two, one. Sam. Did you both say me? Yeah.

Points, sweet points. Still in last place, but, you know, it's okay. Congratulations, Sam. Now it is time for Ask the Science Couch. We've got a listener question for our couch of finally honed scientific minds. It's from Katie Marie Sweer. Is there actually science behind the barefoot running trend? Mostly, I feel like I've heard that that's most you should do it on like dirt or sand

but that barefoot running on pavement is not as good it's like kind of a shrug a scientific shrug so it became a huge trend based on the book born to run which was based on research by dan lieberman who's a human evolutionary biologist who was basically like we didn't have shoes so our human ancestors ran barefoot and then like people still get injured in shoes and so barefoot running strengthens the muscles you need to prevent injury what about like sleeping on the ground does that my back still hurts sometimes should i sleep on rocks that's it where it feels like it's sorry shoehorns with the paleo diet sort of like we don't have to eat raw leaves anymore yeah we don't have to walk around in the epcot ride yeah in spaceship earth

in spaceship earth yeah there's a scene where there's like a little diorama of a caveman, and he's been walking around so much that his feet are glowing, and he's blowing on them because they hurt so bad. And I'll never get that image out of my mind. It's hell of a ride. It's gone now. You could have bought the caveman with the foot, probably. No, they don't let those things go on the market. There's a whole thing. You could have, though. I could have gotten someone to steal it for me. Yeah, I'm going to Epcot.

I would steal for you, probably. Don't go to jail for me, Sari. And if you do, for a good reason. Good reason, yeah. You should probably dock me. Jesus, that was a terrible tangent. It was not useful. And Sari has a hard out, so it was a disaster of a tangent. It was not useful and Sari has a hard out, so it was a disaster of a tangent.

But back to real feet and real studies on those real feet, research hasn't corroborated those findings. Some research says barefoot running strengthens the muscles. Some says that running with shoes might actually increase foot muscle use because the shoes are squishy and so like your foot needs to stabilize within the shoe platform but basically what people agree on is that it changes the way that you run how much cushioning you have on your foot most of runners strike the ground with their heel first so they run like heel and then toe and that's like rear foot running that is higher impact on your knees, I think. And I'm pretty sure I run like this because I don't pay attention to where my feet hit the ground. A smaller percentage of people, especially sprinters, run with like their toe first,

and then their heel goes. It's easier to push yourself forward faster that way. And that puts more stress on your lower leg muscle. So it changes like where the impact gets dispersed in your leg. And running with barefoot can cause you to adopt more of a front foot falling. It does seem like it would be nicer. Yeah. Because when you hit with your front of your foot, you can do a little of control. A lot of elite runners are forefoot runners. So I think that

probably played into the idea that this is better but basically switching from running in shoes to running barefoot or with minimal shoes like the toe shoes is generally not good because it's switching your running style too quickly and so you're more likely to get injured i think right because your body is just not used to that and so million dollar idea shoes that slowly disappear all bad shoes yeah yeah if you want to ask the science couch you can follow us on twitter at scishow tangents where we'll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes every week thank you to at j Jen White 2014 at Google Man and everybody else who tweeted us

your questions this episode. I like putting ones in that I know you're going to say. I'm so excited. Google Man. Sam Buck final scores.

Sari with one. Stefan with one. Me with one. Sam, you came out on top. Oh, yes. You played yourself. I won. You won won how does it feel

I dedicate it to my mother if you like this show and you want to help us out it's really easy to do that you can leave us a review wherever you listen that helps us know what you like about the show also we look at iTunes reviews for future topic ideas so leave those there if you want to second you can tweet your favorite moment from this episode. And finally,

if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us. Thank you for joining. I have been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. I've been Chex Mix. And I've been Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangents is a co-production of Complexly and the wonderful team at WNYC Studios. It's created by all of us

and produced by Caitlin Hoffmeister and Sam Schultz, who also edits a lot of these episodes along with Hiroko Matsushima. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chakravarti. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our social media organizer is Victoria Bongiorno, and we couldn't make any of this without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you, and remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing. There's this thing called runner's trots, which actually just means runner's diarrhea, which is exactly what it sounds like needing to poop during or right after running especially

more than three miles out of a study of 109 distance runners 62 had sometime during their training stopped to poop and 47 had runs or diarrhea afterwards it doesn't have to do with sickness but and we don't really know why it happens, but it has to do with, like, jostling your organs around. Or, like, your blood or hormone flow to your intestines. You're about to go run. Are you going to get diarrhea at Disney World?

I... Wouldn't be the first time. Yeah, wouldn't be the first time.