Stuff You Should Know - The 4-minute Mile: Greatest Sports Story?

Episode Date: June 9, 2022

Nobody thought the 4-minute mile was humanly possible, until it was. The story of how it happened is remarkable. So sit back and take a listen.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and there's Jerry and there's Roger Bannister. We're all hanging out, running around, being crazy,

and this is Stuff You Should Know. Good intro. It was not my best. Let me ask you this, Chuck. Do you miss the intros of your where I would relate some maybe current news story to what we were talking about? There would be an intro that I presented. Do you miss that or have we evolved past that? I mean, I thought those were great for sure. And occasionally when you do them again, it's nice. But also just don't mind the banter version as well. I think they're both great. Okay. Well, maybe I'll pepper it in a little more than I have been. That's fine. Okay. All right. I love it. Because I like the banter too, but I just want to make sure I'm not like slacking off on my end that I'm supposed to be holding up. No. I mean, that certainly keeps

me quiet longer, which is good or bad, depending on which one of us you prefer. So why can't you just prefer both, you know? I like to think so. Like who's an Ernie fan and who's a Bert fan? Everybody's a Bert and Ernie fan, you know? Yeah. Okay. You like how three of the Charlie's Angels equal. Yeah, but Cheryl Ladd was far and away the best. You saw that she was on Good Morning America 3. And we were in our little virtual green room on Zoom. And when you're doing that, everyone, and you're on live TV, you're watching the feed of the television show so you kind of know what's going on.

And they did a teaser to go into commercial or show this very pretty lady with blonde hair kind of from a distance. So sitting on the couch. And I went, in my mind, is that Cheryl Ladd? And sure enough, they said in coming up, Cheryl Ladd. Yeah. She followed us. We opened for Cheryl Ladd finally. I know. It's pretty cool. Yeah. So, and I know what I'm talking about. I watch a lot of Charlie's Angels. Cheryl Ladd is definitely the best one. Okay.

Don't at me. So I've got an intro for this one. Oh, you ready? We had the banter and the intro. Perfect. Yeah. Chuck. Yes. We're talking about the four minute mile today. Let's begin. You know, I got this idea because I was until I quit watching it because it's pretty terrible. I was watching that show Winning Time on HBO about the Lakers dynasty. Oh, yeah. Did it get bad?

Yeah. I think it kind of stinks. But John C. Riley is really good in it. But he told a story about Roger Bannister and the fact that previous to Roger Bannister, no one had ever thought the four minute mile was an achievable, like the human body just couldn't do it until he did it. And then it started happening on the kind of semi-rig. And it was in the show, it worked really well. It was a good story. And I thought, you know, I don't know much about Roger Banner, Roger Bannister or his story. So we had Dave Ruse cook up this article.

And it's, I found it super cool and kind of inspiring and uplifting. Yeah, it is. It's pretty neat. Ruse did a really good job with this too, like the suspense. And I've got chills a couple of times reading it. I did too. He asked us a shout out to a guy who wrote a book called The Perfect Mile, Neil Bascombe, because he used it as one of his sources. And I guess he thought it was so great that he wanted to shout out Neil Bascombe. But one of the things that you have to do when you're talking about the four minute mile and why people thought it was impossible

is to kind of start at the beginning, because the mile hasn't always existed. So the four minute mile hasn't always existed. The mile's been around much longer than the idea of the four minute mile. In fact, it was the ancient Greeks who kind of kicked the whole thing off by coming up with a measurement called a stade. And a stade was the distance across a field in an Olympic stadium. I guess the Olympic stadium. It was about 200 meters, right? And so if you were running around a modern track, like a track and field track, you would go halfway and stop and you'd shout stade. That's what I do when I run.

I go about halfway around the track. I'm finished. I yell stade and everyone's like, what's up with this creep? But that was the Greeks were into their running events. And the 200 meter, the half lap, as we know it, the stade was the big showcase event. And then they had the Dia Ulos. That was two stades. That was a 400. And then they had even longer ones all the way up to about 4,800 meters. And then we get, if you want to know where the name mile came from, came from, what is going on with me? I guess you're getting old. A little foggy. Oh, no. No, no, no. No. The Romans, they ran, but that wasn't like their premiere event.

But the Romans did like to march. And when they did march, they marked their distance every 1,000 strides. And in Latin, it was known as a mile passus. M-I-L-L-E, with a stride being two steps, about two feet, five inches. So at that time, every mile passus was 4,833 feet. Still not quite where we are today. Right. And that's considered the first mile. And it became like a regular marker that Romans used. The other thing Romans were famous for was building roads everywhere they went. And they marked these miles, these somewhat shorter miles than what we consider a mile today, along these roads. And what's crazy is that these Roman roads existed in, say,

the UK for centuries and centuries. I mean, like tens of centuries. So that by the 15th, 16th centuries, wealthy people in the UK used to have their servants race one another from one mile marker to another mile marker. So first, you've got the mile thanks to the Romans. Well, you have a history of foot racing thanks to the Greeks, a mile thanks to the Romans, and then the mile run thanks to the Brits in the 16th and 17th centuries. Right. And then it took, I believe, in 1592 to get to where we are today lengthwise, because British Parliament said a mile is eight furlongs, and a furlong is 660 feet, or 1,760 yards, or the very familiar 5,280 feet. But we should note that as far as a

mile long race, we still don't do that mile long race in the Olympics. We do the 1500 meters, which is almost that. It's 15th, 16th of a mile. Yeah, so close. It's just so maddening. It's like, just keep going a little further. Kind of annoying, actually. The same thing happens at track meets in high school and college. Starting in the 80s, they started building tracks to a uniform 400 meters, and you can't really divide a mile by 400 meters cleanly. So you've got four times around the track is about as close as you can come to a mile. I think it's nine meters shy of a mile. Just nine meters. Yeah, I know. Thanks for showing there.

Yeah, exactly. That finish line's not movable. Come on, let's get it together, everybody. But they don't. They do have special mile races for college and high school, but it's not like a regular event. It's usually a 400 meter, 800 meter, 1,200 meter, 1,600 meter, 16,000 meter, something like that. 160 million meter race. All right, so we're going to go back in time again to the 19th century when, you know, remember our episode on pubs and taverns? They got into running and sporting stuff aside from like darts, and they had tracks sometimes built out behind them, and they would organize these mile long races, and people could bet on them, and the runners were called pedestrians. So initially,

the sport of running was called pedestrianism, which is hysterical. So it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. No. And then someone said, hey, we've got all these cricket fields, and we've got all these soccer or football fields to them, and a circle around one of these things is about a quarter mile if we plan it right, and a quarter mile track is what we're looking for. So they started putting these tracks around sporting fields, and all of a sudden you've got, you know, a really easy way to race a mile against another person. Right. Or the clock, or both. Yeah, you could run against the clock and a person at the same time. It's been done. Yeah, I can do it all the time. So because, by the way, pedestrianism

reminds me of like a clinical term for a kink, like walking around in public with no pants on, like porcupine in it would be pedestrianism. Yeah. So because the publicans figured out like, hey, we can make money off of this, it started attracting more and more people, and it became more and more popular. And there was like this whole jam in the 19th century where pedestrians were called milers because people were nuts for the mile race. And there were pretty quickly, in the beginning of the 19th century, like pedestrian stars, miler, mile racer stars, probably highest among them was a guy named Captain Robert Barclay. The reason that he was such a star is because he was the first guy to break the five minute mark, which at the time was considered beyond the limits of

human endurance. Sure. And, you know, pretty great. Five minute mile is not bad in those conditions, especially when you look at the meals that this guy would eat. Barclay, his training regimen, included, quote, a breakfast dinner of beefsteak or mutton chops underdone with stale bread and old beer. Yeah. I mean, I don't know why it's got to be stale and old. Whenever I think of training, like eating for training, I think of that 5k on the office. Michael Scott, like, who's trying to carb load. So he had a big thing of fettuccine Alfredo right before the race. That was a good one. So, yeah, Barclay had kind of a weird regimen, but it worked for him. And also you have to consider, Chuck, like these people were not running in like, you know,

on clouds or anything or nikes. They were running in like, probably some, the most uncomfortable shoe anyone living today would have ever encountered. And this guy was still running a 5 minute mile. Yeah. On, you know, who knows what the tracks behind the pubs were made of, but like, legitimate racing tracks were made of like tiny rocks, oftentimes. Or cinders, I was surprised to see. Which is a tiny rock. Oh, is it? I thought it was like old wood, burned wood. No, it's like, I think it's sort of like crushed lava rock. Okay. Okay. I got you. That doesn't sound very comfortable at all. No, not at all. I remember when I was a kid, one of my and I still love it, one of my favorite war movies growing up because it was a big HBO special was Gallipoli. And that

had a sort of a sub story about Mel Gibson was one of the young stars. And I can't remember the other guy's name this other Australian. They were like track foes, and then eventually friends. And I remember just seeing the shoes that they were running on and the tracks that they were running on. Yeah. When I was like 10 and 11 years old, just thinking like, what is going on back then? Nothing, pain. That's what was going on foot pain. Was it a good movie? I've never seen it. Yeah, fantastic. That's the first time I've ever heard it pronounced out loud too. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah, good stuff. So the the 19th century was a big, a big deal for for running, basically people were super into it. There was a lot of betting going on. There were professional runners who made a

career out of it. And like we said, Captain Robert Barclay was the first guy to break the five minute mile. That was the beginning of the 19th century by the toward the end of the 19th century, they were getting closer and closer to breaking the four minute mile. Like just in that century, with those terrible shoes, they had gone from five minutes to really close to four minutes. Yeah, and it was really cool. Like they were, like you said, the professionals that were making prize money and people were gambling on it. But to the there was a certain like academic class of athlete that sort of looked down upon them. And they were known as like the gentlemen amateurs. And you know, they went to Cambridge and they went to Oxford,

and they were educated and like excelled academically. And they excelled athletically. And they didn't feel like you had to give up the one to do the other. And it was sort of a pride in doing all those things really well. And we mentioned this because as we'll see, Bannister was one of these gentlemen amateurs. But one of the earlier ones was a guy named Walter George. And he was one of the first big dogs that set a record that lasted about 30 years, a mile record. Yeah. So he was an amateur, meaning like he didn't run for money. He considered that kind of lowly being a gentleman amateur. But he raced against the top rated pro at the time, a guy named William Cummings. And in this meet called the mile of the century,

they raced in front of a crowd of like 20,000 people. That's amazing. It is. Because also, this is at the Lily Bridge sporting grounds in London. And there weren't stadiums or bleachers. Like you had to like, you were in a crowd of 20,000 people at ground level watching a race. Now you're watching the head of the person in front of you. Basically, yeah. So 20,000 people turned out for this mile of the century. And Walter George won with a time of I think four minutes, 12 seconds. And this is in 1886, again, with terrible, terrible shoes. I wonder if they were just the people in the front, like 10 feet, we're just passing word back, you know, they were like, they're both running fast. And then they go, they're both running fast.

And they would just keep saying that until someone won until at the end, it was like the boat hurry smashed. Right. The panic ensued. Good stuff. Yeah, it is good stuff. But there's something to be said about that four, four minute, 12 second time. First of all, it was the amateur, Walter George, who got it. Second of all, like, that's really close to a four minute mile. And we're talking 1886 here, right? So all of a sudden people are like, wait a minute, maybe, maybe it's not impossible. Maybe it is impossible, but we're close enough that there's, there's runners, there's elite runners around the world. And this is a time where running was still really popular, not just in Europe, but in the United States as well, who were saying,

I'm going to dedicate my career to chasing that four minute mile. And that's, that's kind of what happened starting in the early 20th century. All right. I think that's a great place to break. Okay. We'll talk about a few of these people as that time ticks down toward four minutes. It's very exciting stuff. Right for this. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay. I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh God.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikala, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life.

In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too.

Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so Walter George in 1886 has set the record at the time, which was what, 412? Yes. And 30 years later, almost 30 years later, a man named American actually named Norman Tabor in 1915 shaved off two tenths of a second. So now Norman Tabor owns a world record. And then for about 40 years, it started just going down little by little. There was a Finnish runner named Pavo Nurmi, who owned the record for a little while, I think brought it down to 410, made the sport kind of even more popular. A Frenchman named Jules, how would you say that? Ladoomegu. Ladoomegu went single digits for the first time at 409.2 in 31. New Zealander

named Jack Lovelock brought it down to 407.6 in 33. I think an American named Glenn Cunningham brought it down to 406.8. That was Glenn Cunningham, the Kansas powerhouse. And this is a cool story because he as a child had his legs burned in a kerosene accident that actually killed his brother, he was told he might never walk again. And apparently it hurt less to run than it did to walk. So I don't know if Force Gump got this from there, but apparently as a child, like everywhere he went, he was running. Exactly. And like he was told that he would never walk again. And he ends up growing up to set the world record for the fastest mile at 406.8. That's an amazing story. And also we need to say like Jack Lovelock, Glenn Cunningham, Parvo Nermey, these people are world

famous. Like if you went to America and you said Jack Lovelock, most people would know what you're talking about because again, track was really, really popular in the United States for a while. And I went online to look to see what happened. And no one knows. Everybody's like, it's kind of tough to watch. It's just one person, it's not a team. People had hypotheses, but none of them were like, this is what happened. I suspect it was the rise of football. And people are like, yeah, football. And I like baseball too. And it just kind of got edged out by the popularity of other sports. That's my guess. I feel like Olympic track is still very big. Definitely. Like I feel like in America, at least in the summer Olympics, like the Michael Johnson's and the, the, the

Flo Joes are like, they make a lot of the biggest headlines. I always loved, I was never good at track and I never tried to do it. But I always really loved it growing up because my dad was a collegiate track star in a small school union, university in Tennessee, but he still owned some like records from union as a hurdler. And it was sort of his passion. So like growing up he would watch the track and the Olympics and really get into it. And I was always desperately trying to seek a way to connect with him. So I would watch track and it still sort of is a special thing for me for the Olympics. Love watching track. Yeah, I can imagine it. It sucks me up every time too. But then, you know, after the Olympics, I forget all about it until

the next Olympics. And there's plenty of races that are like run all around the world, around the country, like year round, basically, and they don't get televised, you know? Yeah, that's the thing. It's, it's a big Olympic sport here, but you don't, no one talks about like the, you know, the Hawaiian program or whatever. Right. But this is, so this, but this is at a time when like the world is into track. And one of the, one of the things that happened that really kind of captured the imagination of everybody was when two Swedish runners became like the world's best runners, and they started breaking one another's world record for the mile, getting closer and closer each time to a four minute mile. And there was this really famous meet between the two of them,

Gunder Haag and Arnie Anderson. And it was in 1945 at Malmo in Sweden. So it's the two best runners in the world, who everybody knows in the world. Both of them are Swedish. And this race is being held in Sweden. So it's like a big deal race. And both of these guys are like flip-flopped world record holders for the mile. That's right. And both of them got basically cheated out of Olympic fame because of World War II, the games were canceled in 40 and 44, when they would have been at like the peak of their, you know, athletic ability. Yeah. But I believe the end up, I mean, like you said, they flip-flopped and it ended up at the Malmo event. I think Haag won and set the new record at 401.4. How close was he? Close. I saw that it was estimated that he was four

stride short of a four minute mile. Yeah. And I think this really like hits home on just how hard it was to do. And it's still super hard, but how hard it was back then that the the the premier athletes in the world could get close, but not quite get there. Yeah. Like it didn't, it didn't, you didn't get any healthier. You didn't get in any better shape. You couldn't run any better than Arnie Anderson and Gooner Haag. So, and they just couldn't do it. It must have driven them crazy. Yeah. Some people looked at it differently. There were two different ways to look at it. Some people said these guys are at 1.4 seconds off of a four minute mile, right? Somebody's going to get there. We're just too close and we've been edging closer and closer over the last

like century or so. So, somebody's going to get there. Other people said, look, if, if, you know, Haag and Anderson can do it, nobody can do it. It's beyond the limits of the capabilities of the human body. Yeah. There was a guy in particular, a track coach, sort of a legend, apparently named Brutus Hamilton, who he was one of the ones saying like, it can't happen. And he coached at Cal Berkeley and did a lot of, he wasn't just sort of like, not just don't think it's going to happen. He, he did a lot of research on the limits, the physiological limits of human, the human body and published a list of what he called the ultimate of human effort, where he took a lot of these track and field sports and basically said, no one will ever be able to throw a javelin

further than this or a shot put further than that or go over a high bar until, by the way, look for a future episode on Dick Fosbury. That's totally coming. And he said the mile, he just said, there's no way it's ever going to happen. The human body, there's just a physical barrier there that won't allow it. Right. And I read an LA Times article from the 90s that pointed out that every single one of those limits have been broken at least once. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's sort of the hubris of being in your own time and space and thinking that it'll never get any better. Yeah, that's a lot of hubris though, to publish your hubris. Sure. You know? Yeah. So poor Brutus Hamilton, I guess he had good intentions because he was saying like, don't even try,

everybody just give up, which makes him a terrible coach really, but I'm not sure what his motivation was. But there were people out there who were like, no, Brutus Hamilton is wrong. And one of those people was our hero of this story, Roger Bannister, who was a British dude, who I believe was 24 when he ended up breaking the record. Yeah. I think if we were a PBS documentary, we would say, and it would be right before the commercial is, what Hamilton did not count on was the power of the human spirit. The spirit of Roger Bannister. Because that's really true. I mean, as you'll see, I mean, let's go ahead and talk about Bannister. He was, by all accounts, a great runner. He was an Olympic caliber runner. Yeah. But he was, like we said, one of those gentleman

runners who was very stubbornly apparently a gentleman amateur and like many times or much of his career refused to take on a coach. He would have his own methods of training. He would go to school. He studied medicine at Oxford, and he didn't like give it all up to just train full time and hire a coach to train him full time in order to improve his times. No, this guy was training to be a doctor and an Olympic runner at the same time in the same life. Uh-huh. In the same years in his early 20s. Exactly. So he was rather motivated, you could say, and he started out ho-hum kind of. I think he had a time of like 452. Yeah. And his first race at Oxford, his first mile race, he was a freshman. He still came in second. So that was respectable,

but he's like, this is not nearly good enough. Within a few months, he shaved 20 seconds off of his time. That's ridiculous. Yeah. And he'd also learned that he really liked this track stuff because he had been a cross-country runner in high school or grammar school. And when he got to college, he tried track. And in track, you can just run past a whole bunch of people when you, you know, kick it into sixth gear. Yeah. And he was like, I like doing that a lot. I'm going to start really focusing on this track thing. And that's what he, he did. He basically set all of his spare time toward training to be a track star in between times when he was studying and practicing to become a doctor. All right. I think that's a great time for a break. Yeah. Yeah. And listen

to me. I'm Arnie Anderson. Yeah, sure. I'd run a fast mile. That was great. That's the second yashore appearance in the past few weeks. See what's going on. The Swedes are in the zeitgeist. I guess so. All right. We're going to pick up with Roger Bannister and his sights set on Helsinki right after this. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay. I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the

right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh God. Seriously. I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikulur and to be honest,

I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars. If you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic

or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Chuck. So we're talking about Roger Bannister and he said, I really like this track stuff. And when he started to become a track star at Oxford, people started saying, hey, you know, there's some Olympics coming up. I think they were the ones in Los Angeles, right? In 1948. Okay. Was that 48? Yeah. And people said you should run for that. You should try the mile race. I think you do really well. Maybe the 1500. Who knows? And he was level-headed enough not to get swept up in that because he knew he just wasn't ready. So he decided he would set

his sights on the 1952 games in Helsinki and train for those instead rather than trying to rush things and enter the 1948 Olympics, which he probably could have, but he just didn't have enough faith in his abilities to win gold. So he put it off for four years. That's the kind of like mental discipline this guy had. And that would be Helsinki, Sweden? Finland. Do you get that reference? No, I wish I did. I might just let it hang out there then. I always feel so foolish when things like this happen. Like, I don't think I'm going to talk for the rest of the episode. No, you played it perfectly though. You answered just like in the movie. All right. Uncle Buck. No, it was in Die Hard. It was when that Jackass newscaster,

they have like the terrorist expert and he talks about something like the Helsinki protocol or the Helsinki something and he just butts in and goes, and that's Helsinki, Sweden. The guy's like, no, Finland. So you did perfect. You did perfect too, buddy. I feel like talking again. So I sounded like a real Jackass newscaster. You did, but that's what you were going for. All right. So where are we? Oh, yeah. He says yes on Helsinki, which is 52, and again, shuns the coaching and starts kind of sponsoring or not sponsoring, but planning out these races in all over the world. He raced in New Zealand. He raced in America. He was lining himself against the best runners in the world. He ran a very high-profile race

in Philadelphia called the Benjamin Franklin Mile, appropriately, and became sort of a big star in America at this point, such that there was a headline or I don't know, it was a headline, but something in a newspaper was quoted, no manager, no trainer, no monsieur, no friends. He's nuts or he's good. That's pretty great. Very 1950s. Yeah, it is, especially with that voice of yours, man. They also said that he was a worthy heir to Jack Lovelock, which just goes to show you how much of a star Jack Lovelock was because he'd raced like 15, 20 years earlier. Yeah. And where was he? He was at 408 by this point, by the way. Okay, so he's got it down to 408 and he's like, okay, I think I'm ready for the Olympics.

And he goes there and he runs in the 1500 and he places fourth, so he doesn't meddle. And this is completely out of step with the plans that he had. I just suddenly started talking like William Shatner for some reason. And it was a big disappointment for him and England because this was post World War II. England got beat up pretty badly, as far as the shape of the cities and especially London. And they needed some big athletic victories. And I think they only got one goal that year. They ended up kind of toward the top middle of the pack with 11 medals total, but it was certainly kind of looked at as a national disappointment as far as the Olympics go. Yeah, and Bannister was very disappointed in himself, too. I think he'd really

felt, you know, the spirit of England on his shoulders. So he felt like he failed his whole country. And like I said, this was totally out of step with his plans, which were he was going to get the gold in Helsinki in 52 and then retire from running and focus on medicine. And that's just what he was going to do with his life. And it didn't pan out like that. So rather than just being like, pan, this sucks. I'm not even going to be a doctor anymore. I'm just going to go, I don't know, just be a shiftless drifter. How about that? He didn't do that. He redoubled his efforts and said, okay, maybe I can't get Olympic gold. I had my shot. Didn't make it. I'm going to focus my sights instead on breaking the four minute mile. That's what

I, Roger Bannister, am going to do. And he's set about doing it. Yes. And he had a little trick up his sleeve in that he was just, he was no ordinary runner in his studies as a med student. He had a research scholarship while at Oxford to study the physiological effects of running. So this is amazing. All of a sudden he's doing these deep dive experiments on the very thing he's trying to achieve, which is what can the human body take athletically? He had a paper called the carbon, and like on a scientific level, he had a paper called the carbon dioxide stimulus to breathing and severe exercise, probably helpful. And another one called the effects on the respiration and performance during exercise of adding oxygen to the inspired air. So he's

getting a scientific physiological understanding of what needs to happen, which was, I think, for sure. I mean, he had the heart, but this is definitely a leg up on his competitors. Yeah, definitely. And he had the help of a kindred spirit named Norris McWhorter who would go on to found with his twin brother, the Guinness Book of World Records. And Norris McWhorter was also into running. He was into data and analysis. And so he very eagerly helped Roger Bannister with these scientific studies, including being a guinea pig himself. And one of the studies that they conducted together was to put McWhorter on a treadmill, like a 1940s treadmill, by the way, or a 1950s treadmill, I guess, and just make him run flat out as fast as he possibly can

for as long as he could. And I guess he made it to like the six minute mark before he blacked out and fell and was shot like an arrow out of a cannon, which wouldn't be very effective. But it was in this case, it was a McWhorter arrow out of a treadmill cannon. And luckily, they had a bunch of blankets and pillows and stuff like against the wall behind the treadmill to catch him because I guess Bannister had conducted this experiment on himself many times and knew what to expect. So he's like, okay, the six minute mark, if I can just whittle down my time, I can run flat out for four minutes. And I won't collapse. Those are the those are the things here, the time running up against the time, and then collapsing at some point, like it's it's that's

what's going to happen if I if I run far enough. So from these studies, like he started to devise his strategy at breaking the four minute mile, and it's extremely clever. Yeah, like, like, it made perfect sense. He was like, I'm so close. And several of us are so close. If we can just stave off that collapse for a few seconds, then we're there. And one of his big jams was conservation of energy. And when you look at, like when you look at a Michael Johnson run, or a flow Joe or anybody in their prime, it always just astounded me how compact and efficient their stride was. There was no, like, if you look at me run, I look like a sick chicken, you know, there's no form. There's no efficiency. I'm like, limbs are running all over the place.

And, you know, that's when you look at these elite athletes, their strides are perfect machines of efficiency, basically, no wasted energy. Right. And that was one thing that Bannister, you know, zeroed in on like you, you like, you're just moving forward. That's everything. Every movement of your muscle was to propel you forward. The other thing is he was trying to figure out how to expand his his cardiopulmonary limits. Yeah. To take in more oxygen when he inhaled a breath. He could probably breathe through both nostrils, I'm guessing. Right. He didn't have a deviated septum to lower his resting heart rate, which is a telltale sign of either somebody with a heart condition or an elite athlete. It's weird that both of those have

lower resting heart rates. So we worked on this stuff. He figured it out. But he also realized that he needed help. He needed basically teammates. And so he went against his own, his own type and met up with the two Chrisses, Chris Chattery and Chris Brasher. And he used these guys, well, they didn't use them. I think they were fully aware and like willing participants. Yeah, they're on his training team. Right. Okay. That's a better way to put it. He used them as Pacers. So they helped him keep his pace. And after three laps around the track, they would unleash the banister. Yeah. That was the strategy. Dirty. Yeah, I think it's really interesting to the idea of having these Pacers, because it is a solitary sport, but clearly you're better

when you have either racing against someone or in this case, have a Pacer that's sort of, you know, reminding you how fast you should be running at this point in the race, because it's not, it's not a sprint, you know, there's a technique there. And there's a game plan. And in every case, I believe, generally, it's you got to save some for that final burst. Otherwise, you're toast. That's why you see these great moments where someone comes from like five or six back at the end, because they have saved more than the other people have in front of them. Yeah. And that was the role of the two Chrisses to keep him from expending too much energy too early. Exactly. And they were really good at running a specific pace. And because he had two

different Pacers, he, like each one could run at a specific pace without exerting themselves beyond their own limits. Because the first Chris would run the first two laps. The second Chris would run the third lap. And then the fourth lap banister ran by himself just away from the pack. And this was their strategy. This was what they trained for. And apparently he didn't run for like eight months before the race that he ran on May 6, 1954 at Oxford. And he chose this race very wisely and deliberately. I think he didn't race other people specifically. Right. He trained. Yeah. Right. He was training, but he didn't participate in any actual race. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he chose this, the place, the site, the day, everything very carefully,

didn't he? Yeah. So he chose his favorite track, which was the Ifley Road track at Oxford. And again, this was the Cinder track. And on the morning of May 6, 1954, it would, it had rained. And so a Cinder track is going to be soggy, which would indicate like slower times. And in his memoir, he sort of was like, you know, everything, I'll just read it. I had reached my peak physically and psychologically. There would never be another day like it. This was my first race for eight months. And all this time had been storing nervous energy. If I tried and failed, I should be dejected. And my chances would be less on any later attempt. So what he was basically saying was it's now or never today. Yeah. And what the problem was is the weather wasn't cooperating.

So whether, whether it worked out or not, this was his day. So he went out there, of course, to try it. And it just turns out that this, this terrible weather, the wet track, the gale force wins, everything just kind of died down by race time. And he was like, okay, everything's starting to fall into place. This, this is in fact going to be the day that I break that four minute mile. And apparently he got ready and set. And if this were a movie, you, you'd be like, I can't believe they did that. But apparently in real life, there was a false start. All this buildup, Roger Bannister is about to like pop from nervous energy. And there's a false start. They have to start over again. So he has to reset his mind back at the starting line.

And then finally it starts. And I think Brasher, Chris Brasher was the one who ran, uh, who paced him for the first two laps, right? That's right. So he's setting pace. Bannister is yelling at him to go faster, but he's, that's basically Bannister being a little overhyped in the moment. And thank goodness he had his paces there, because Basher's, Brasher's job was to stay in the moment and know what the pace should be and not like deviate from that. So he, he didn't go faster. He stayed that pace that he knew he should stay on and ignored him basically. And they were at the half mile mark at 158. So it is, they're halfway there. They're on pace to do it. And then Chris Chattoway takes over. Yeah. And so Chattoway and

Bannister are running for, um, the third lap, the three quarter of a mile mark where they finish. And they're at three minutes, 0.7 seconds, three minutes and seven tenths of a second. And they're a little bit over. That's a little bit nerve wracking. Um, and then at the end of that three quarter mile mark, at the end of the third lap, Chattoway just melts away and Bannister takes off. And Bannister had figured out how to accelerate, how to move himself after being exerting himself for three minutes. You know, like this was a really fast three laps around the race. And he figured out how to find a different gear and he put it into that gear and he took off at a sprint for the last, the fourth lap. And he ended up crossing the finish

line, uh, at what Chuck? Well, this is the coolest part, uh, and the way Dave puts it is really very dramatic and awesome. Uh, the announcer at the event, uh, I think it was his buddy Norris McWhorter, right? Yeah. Which is so cool. Just like the movie moment, his best buddies there. And he said, the result of event number six, the one mile winner, Augie Bannister of Exeter and Merton colleges in a time which will be a new English record, a new track record, a new British Empire Commonwealth record, a European record, a world record and three, and apparently as soon as he said three, everyone went nuts and you couldn't even hear the rest of the time announced. Yep. So Bannister ended up running that day a, uh, three minute, 59 and

four tenths second mile. The first human being in history, as far as we know, uh, to have run a mile in less than four minutes. Amazing. He did this impossible thing. People were like, people were like, it's not possible and Bannister did it. And what's really remarkable and weird and kind of circles back to John C. Riley is within six weeks, Bannister's four minute mile. This thing that no human had ever done and they've been trying to do for centuries now in six weeks, Bannister's record was broken. Yeah, it was. Uh, I think it was John Landy of Australia, go Australia. He beat his time by one second and then in 54, there was a showdown between the two of them, which was a big one. You know, you've got Britain against Australia at the Commonwealth,

uh, British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver and they, the race was called the Miracle Mile. Uh, Landy is ahead on the final turn and apparently glances over his left shoulder to see where Bannister was. And Bannister booped him on the nose and passed him. He had flair like that. Yeah, he did. Uh, they both finished under four minutes, which was amazing. Like, I'm sure that was the first time in that there were ever two runners in the same race. Yeah. But Bannister won 358 eight to 359 six. And since then over the years, there've been more than 1500 athletes to do it. Uh, 13 high schoolers and it is not old hat though. It is every time it happens to any athlete. It is a very, very big deal still. Yeah. To put it in perspective, um,

the number of people who've climbed Mount Everest, which was long considered another impossible feat for a human, um, is about 6,000. Only 1500 have ever broken a four minute mile. So it is rather significant when somebody does it still, like you said for sure. And it was, you know, Dave makes a point, you know, obviously the tracks now, the shoes, the training, the advance of medicine and training and everything they do now is a big deal. But there was, there was clearly something to that psychological barrier and that they start to fall like dominoes these four minute miles right after he did it. He proved to everyone it can be done. And so everyone else said, well, you know, if this medical student can do it, this gentleman athlete can do it, then I can do it.

Yeah. So, um, yeah, they, they, you can make the case that it's like the, the chance of it being impossible was broken. It was now possible and you knew it was possible. So you didn't have that chance of impossibility hanging over your head when you walked up to the starting line anymore because Roger Bannister cleared that away. And what's neat is he, uh, he went on to live a very long life. I think he lived for 64 more years. He died just in 2018, actually. Um, and he got to just soak up all the accolades for that, that whole time. And he did retire from running. He went on to, um, I guess become a doctor. And then later he became the Dean of the medical school at either Oxford or Cambridge. I cannot remember. And, um, if you

are from Oxford or Cambridge, don't be mad at me for not knowing which one's which. Yeah. I mean, can you imagine what it was like for the rest of his life? Every party, every place, every dinner he ever attended, he sticks out his hand. Like, it's like saying, I'm Chuck Yeager. You know, it's like, it doesn't matter what happened since then. Everyone is like, wow. Yeah. He says, I'm Roger Bannister. I ran the mile in three and everybody in the crowd just starts cheering at every party. He said, you can never get it out. It's like Dick Fosbury. He was like, I'm Dick Fosbury. You know what I invented. I don't know. I don't know anything

about this Dick Fosbury. I, it's like you've got an in joke with me, but I'm not in on it. We'll do an episode on it. He invented the Fosbury flop, which is going over the high jump bar backwards. No one had ever done that before. Oh, I can't wait to talk about this guy. Yeah. Cause that was a crazy, weird way to do it. And plus his name is Dick Fosbury. Right. I mean, that's enough to do at least the short stuff on. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, look at you. Shade. What did I do? A short stuff? Well, no, I'm saying just for your name being Dick Fosbury. That's enough to get you a short,

even if you didn't do anything remarkable at all, we could just talk 15 minutes about a name like Dick Fosbury. I got you. You and I could. What's the current record, by the way? The current record is held by Hasham El-Garouge of Morocco. And it is three minutes, 43 and three tenths of a second. And that's a 23 year old record. Yeah, that was 99. That's pretty amazing. Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands holds the women's record, which is 412. So the four minute mile apparently has not been broken by a woman yet. Not yet. It will though. Yeah, definitely. You got anything else?

I got nothing else. I love this episode. Me too. It was a good one, good pick, good idea. Thank you, John C. Riley for this one. And since I just thank John C. Riley, obviously it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this a little love for our TV show. Did you see this one? Yeah. It was very sweet. I thought it was. Hey guys, want to write this email because my wife recently subscribed to Discovery Plus and after a few days I realized I finally had the opportunity to watch your TV show. Nice. I have to admit that for the first 15 seconds,

very first 15 seconds, Brain's Gone Wild had me hooked. And that was the name of, well, long story. But as it aired, that was the name of our first TV episode. Right. The pilot aired last, didn't it? Yeah. In standard fashion. Weird thing. I believe that the show is ahead of its time. Well, well. And I'm sad that the only season, only one season was produced. However, I am grateful that the Stuff You Should Know podcast lives on. Recently caught up to the 2018 episodes.

Oh wow. So Chris isn't going to hear this for a few years. I'm excited to hear you two cover recent topics as they unfolded. I love you all and thank you for keeping me happy, educated and grounded through the years. And I look forward to the great content to come with the biggest hugs one could muster. And that is from Chris L. So I did write Chris L. back and say this is going to be on Listener Mail. So maybe he'll start sandwiching or something. Very nice. Hugs back to you, Chris L. We appreciate that big time. If you want to send us accolades for our TV show or anything else,

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