The might and magic of human muscles

Support for on point comes from the VCU School of Business.

Careers evolve and sometimes growth means continuing your education.

VCU graduate programs offer flexible evening and weekend options for working professionals.

Learn more at business.vcu.edu slash grad.

It's tax season and at LifeLock we know you're tired of numbers.

But here's a big one you need to hear. Billions.

That's the amount of money and refunds the IRS has flagged for possible identity fraud.

Now here's another big number, 100 million.

That's how many data points LifeLock monitors every second.

If your identity is stolen, we'll fix it guaranteed.

One last big number, save up to 40% your first year.

Visit LifeLock.com slash podcast for the threats you can't control.

Terms apply.

Hey it's Magna Chakrabardi with a quick reminder before we get to today's episode.

We just launched the on point club.

It's a new way to connect with and support the show.

For just $7 a month, you get first access to the jackpot each week,

other exclusive content, and you'll be the first to know about special live events.

We are so grateful to those of you who have joined the club already.

And for those of you who haven't, you can sign up right now.

Just go to WBUR.org slash give on point.

That's WBUR.org slash give on point.

Now, stick around for today's show.

WBUR Podcasts Boston.

This is on point.

I'm Magna Chakrabardi and Bonnie Soi joins us today.

Welcome to the show, Bonnie.

Hi, Magna, how are you?

I am very delighted to have you here.

I'd love to start off with a fun little question.

What are the smallest and weirdest muscles in the human body?

Okay, so the smallest or some of the smallest and weirdest muscles in the human body

include my personal favorites, the muscles that give us goosebumps.

Okay, so they are called the erector peely.

And they are these tiny little muscle fibers that attach to the ends of our hair follicles.

You know, think about when we get cold, right?

So all of these little fibers contract to kind of keep us warm, to warm up our body.

And but they're also the muscles that are the muscles of fear.

So you think about a porcupine spines going up when it's scared,

and to make it appear larger, those are hairs.

And also they are the muscles that contract when we have feel extreme emotion.

So think about when we feel awe or we're listening to just a beautiful stunning piece of music

or looking out into the vast ocean and just feeling the smallness of our personal existence

in the larger expanse of the world.

And I'm actually getting goosebumps talking about this because I think

really I have learned to voluntarily control and conjure up these muscles because I think that

they are so wonderful in telling us how we're doing, how we're feeling.

Yeah, absolutely. Honestly, as you're talking, Bonnie, I find myself looking at my arm and

wondering what's going to happen. So I mean, folks might be wondering what an odd question

to start off an episode of on point, but it is not because Bonnie is actually the author of a

terrific book called on muscle. The stuff that moves us and why it matters.

I don't want to leave the goose bump muscles just yet. There's one of these muscles around every

hair follicle. Yeah, pretty much, pretty much. And so it is, you know, this is I think about it as

like a sort of collective intelligence, you know, like muscle has its own intelligence in ways

that we don't even think about. And, you know, I love that about it. Yeah, I usually only think

of my muscles when I'm in the gym and wondering why things are still so hard or I get injured.

But before we get to kind of all the wonderful science of human musculature, I would actually

love to hear you talk with us about your early life and how your family and particularly your

father was a really big influence in your lifelong interest in the human body.

Yeah, sure. You know, my dad was an artist and a martial artist. And so when we were growing up in

New York, we grew up my brother and I grew up in his downstairs studio. He was born and raised in

Hong Kong and we were born and raised in New York. And but he had this really wonderful fascination

with the human body and a life of physicality, you know, that I think was really unique to him as

as a visual artist. You know, he worked as a freelance commercial artist for 20 years in New York and

was, you know, he wasn't any for his work. He, you know, did all like these book covers and movie

posters and advertisements and also the posters advertising, you know, the Olympic Games. And it was just,

we were brought up like doing karate with him in the downstairs studio, you know, front kick,

you know, side kick, grand house kick. And we would also go on runs after dinner with him.

You know, we would be like dangling from his biceps like baby monkeys and we would be doing pushups

with him. And he would say to me, make me a muscle when he walked by when I was like doing my homework

in the kitchen or something. You're like pumping your guns then. Yeah. And it was just like I did it,

like as a reflex and he would just kind of squeeze my muscle and then he would just kind of like laugh

and then he would show me his muscle. You know, you think about that phrase, make me a muscle. And it

really is the phrase that opens the book because not just because it's something that my dad said

to me all the time, but because it is both itself, right? Muscle is the tangible stuff that moves us

through the world. And it's also bigger than itself. You know, when you're asking someone to make

you a muscle, you're asking them to demonstrate something that is not just physical. It is something

about their character and who they want to be in the world. And, you know, muscle being itself

and also more than itself is really what this book is about. Yeah. One more thing about your father,

he drew some of the posters for the 1984 Olympic Games. That's right. He was an illustrator.

It was like the heyday of illustration. So you'd have people drawing or painting

everything from like advertisements. I remember my dad was doing ads for like,

you know, like the Bobzie Twin books or something like that or choose your adventure. I mean,

that we have a choose your adventure. You know, I mean, we read these books voraciously as kids.

He did one called Chinese Dragons that he put himself and my brother on the cover. You're kidding.

You're kidding. I will send it to you after. I used to sit in the library as a kid in front of the

choose your own adventure shelf and essentially just go through them one at a time. I know I've read

that one. So this one was great because it was he was this, you know, this Chinese warlord

and he was kind of like standing on, you know, with this like imperious pose. And my brother is like

the teenage supplicant. You know, like, you know, like, oh, please spare us or let me go with you and

fight the war. It's great. I will send it to you. That would be amazing. Thank you. The reason

I wanted to ask about that, those Olympic Games posters is because, I mean, in a sense,

like all of these worlds come together because in illustrating what we, I mean, I guess as a species

consider the height of what the human body can do, right? The potential of finely trained muscle.

I just thought that that felt a little meaningful. Yeah. I mean, I think about

seeing my dad portray what I really think about as our modern gods on Earth, right? When we watch

the Olympics, we are odd by the incredible range of ability and shapes and sizes and what we are

capable of on a really fundamental level. You know, I think what we all love about watching the

Olympics when it comes around is that, you know, it's not just the sports that we're accustomed to

seeing. It's all the things we never see. And these people have trained, you know, really their whole

lives for this moment, doing something that, you know, so many of us, we understand on a very

visceral level how incredible it is. And it's all these different things that, you know, like

hammer throw, you know, the feats of strength, but also of just agility and flexibility and

beauty. And it's just all these different kinds endurance. Yeah. And like these attributes of muscle,

which are not just attributes of the muscle itself, but of of character, of like this larger sense

of personhood. And I think that that's a philosophy of muscle that I really enjoyed probing it.

You know, one of my favorite Olympics words to watch happens to be in the winter games,

since the bioethalon, right? The ski. Oh my gosh. Yes. And it suddenly occurred to me that,

okay, first of all, they just have incredible endurance for all the skiing. But these are,

these are these are marksmen and markswomen who have trained themselves to be able to shoot

incredibly accurately. And I think many of them do it in between the beats of their heart. So

their bodies are completely still. Right. And you have to think about like going all out skiing.

Yeah. And then your heart is racing. And then you have to immediately quiet yourself and

and be so still. And, you know, then it's the, you know, this really micro control and accuracy,

as you mentioned, and the shooting between the heartbeat. Yeah, exactly. It's like so dialed in.

It's so locked in. It's an amazing feat of control. The heart also happens to be one of the,

if not the biggest muscles in the body. It's hard to measure like strength and endurance and,

you know, like across all muscles. But the heart definitely is one that indoors and just is like,

like through your lifetime, you know, it's there. And it like all these beats, you know,

every single minute, you know, hour, day, year, you know, of your life. And it's just, it adds up to

that really, I mean, like to think of your life as a, as a collection of heart beats is just,

you know, it's really, like I said, like muscles are a really interesting way of measuring,

you know, our mortality, but I think in a really incredible way.

Support for on point comes from the VCU School of Business. Many professionals work with

data now. Fewer feel confident using it to make decisions. VCU's Master of Decision Analytics

Weekend Program helps professionals use data and AI to guide complex strategies.

Develop skills without stepping away from your career. No analytics experience required.

The VCU School of Business is open for business, open for opportunity. Learn more at business.vcu.edu

slash mda weekend.

Not sure how to tackle your taxes. Are you sweating the small print? You may be experiencing

FOMO, the fear of messing up. The answer, using TurboTax on into a credit karma,

they help you get your biggest refund and then we help you do more with it with a personalized

plan designed to help you hit your money goals. It's time to take your taxes to the max.

Start filing today in the Credit Karma app.

This Earth Day, a one in a kind adventure begins. From WBUR, the creators have circled round

an endless thread. You prefer your fruit hot or not. Comes a new interactive story.

100 years into our flooded future, the midnight rebellion is coming. April 22nd. Wherever you get your

podcasts. We asked on point listeners about sort of their relationships with their bodies when

it comes to muscles and maybe the benefits they get from strength training and here's what you

told us. I have to say that I've become a devoted gym rep. After about 10 minutes, start breathing

deeper. My body gets warmer. I start to feel more alert, more awake. Squat, langes, biceps, triceps.

I feel my body has gotten stronger. I've probably gained about 15 pounds, mostly lean. I like to

think so anyway. I have dropped dress sizes. Being stronger, feeling stronger. My wife is 13 years

younger than I. Got to be able to fend off those young bucks. I don't fear falling. I have got great

balance and stability. Used to have knee pain and I used to have shoulder pain. Now I literally have

no pain. Weight lifting for me has been a stress reliever. It's built my confidence. The adorfen

set of produces is fabulous. I feel much better mood-wise. It's almost like my brain is balanced.

You get this little positive mental boost. If I can do hard things in the gym,

I can apply those same principles outside of the gym. I consider it a form of therapy.

My job is often requires me to evaluate and think about many things and weight training is

amazingly simple. It's fun. It's a community of people. I love to lift with women who are

stronger than me. Who will push me? Every trip back from the grocery store is a challenge.

Can I get all the bags of one go? And I'm happy to report thus far, I'm undefeated.

Those were on-point listeners Wayne in Portland, Maine. Deb and Pat in Portland, Oregon. Beth

in Needham, Massachusetts. Kevin in Ames, Iowa, Pam in Bar Harbor, Maine. Chris in Ashburn,

Virginia, Sarah in Charlottesville, Virginia. Anthony and Fresno, California, Lisa and Monica

and Denver, Colorado, Kevin in Honolulu, Hawaii. And Marne in Atlanta, Georgia.

That was just a cup of some of the feedback that we got, Barney, about people and how they

feel in body and mind when they train their muscles. I am very taken by how many people said,

it's not just that they feel physically stronger when they're strength training. It's the

profound impact that it has on their brain. You write in the book that our brains and our muscles

are in fact in constant communication with each other. Even if we think a lot of our muscular

movement is quite unconscious. Right. First of all, I just loved listening to all those voices

talk about not just what their muscles allow them to do, but you're right, how it makes them feel

about themselves. And it's just so fantastic. I love, you know, that the last caller was talking

about being undefeated in the grocery run. I mean, that's, that is an achievement. One of the things

that I learned from researching and writing the book, which I don't think I really thought about,

you know, I just mostly thought about skeletal muscle as it is exactly that, it moves your bones

around and responds to like where you want your brain is telling you that you want to go.

But muscle is also an endocrine tissue. I did not know that. I had no. I think just

explicitly, you know, understanding that and thinking, oh, our muscles are releasing, you know,

biochemical messengers that go all around our body to talk to other ones. You know,

both of us understand what endocrine tissue is and we often think about hormones and like, you

know, it's, it's, you know, certain organs talking to other ones, but our muscle is also an

endocrine tissue. And so that means that when we move our muscles and especially when we exercise,

I mean, your body on exercise changes you, you know, even after a few minutes. And I love this idea

of, you know, all these conversations that are happening, you know, from muscle to brain and to

other systems, you know, ramping up your metabolism, your tissue healing, your, you know, immune cells

and regulating your mood, right? Yeah. When I think of the, the sort of neurological enhancement

that comes from exercise or the first thing that comes to mind is like dopamine. But that's

actually within the brain, you just said that musculature is actually is also producing some kind of

hormone or chemical that goes throughout the body. When what is that? It's sending. So my

kinds are the myochemical messengers that are sent out from your muscles. Those myochines

then travel to the brain, say, and tell it to then respond by releasing, you know, dopamine and

a cannabinoids and all that, like around your body. And so all it's like a complex dance of, of,

of chemical messengers and notes, you know, that is happening, you know, between all of the

different systems in your body. It is so involved with metabolism and mood and controlling

inflammation. And really, it is not an over exaggeration to say that, you know, investing in

your muscular health is investing in cognitive health, cardiovascular health, immune health,

like your overall health. And I think that's why so many doctors are telling patients now that

strength training is that single most important exercise to do as you age. These myochines,

are they released just upon any movement of the muscle or do you have to kind of put your muscles

under stress in order to get the greatest benefit from the these proteins that are released when

you're when the muscles are moving? Yeah. I think whenever you're moving, there, there is activity

happening, right? Because that's just what is what does happen. But the more you move, the more

intense your movement and because exercise does rev your system up, the more activity and

conversation is happening between your muscles and the rest of your body. That is really good for

you. Yeah. And we should say that this remains true no matter how old you are or how abled you

are, right? Because it's any muscle group in the body. That's right. And so I think, you know,

I just had this, I was giving a talk recently and I had this this gentleman come up and he

and he was like, I'm 65 years old. I just started exercising. I've never exercised in my life.

Is it too late for me? And I said, I am so happy to tell you, you know, unequivocally it is not too

late and talk to me in a month. You know, he's just started working with the strength trainer. And

he was, you know, that he will feel different. He will feel transformed. He will feel changed

because that's what muscle does. And muscle is really such a remarkably adaptable

tissue. It's changing all the time and I think that that ability to change, that we are all

capable of change, it translates, you know, to rest to the rest of your life. Especially also true

for when people become elderly, right? Because the body starts becoming an unfamiliar place.

That's right. It's a really good way of putting it. Reclaiming at least even some sense of

agency by incrementally strengthening yourself in, you know, in our older years, I feel as you

just said, it's one of the reasons why doctors are telling people at any age under supervision,

right? We should say that. Yes. That you can really benefit. I mean, especially as you get older

from strength training. Yes, absolutely. We are all changing. Our bodies are always changing. We're

always relearning our bodies in many ways. And to constantly meet ourselves where we are and to,

you know, to understand what we need. And we all, all deserving of the grace and the joy of movement.

And to invest in who we are at this particular moment, we have to constantly be calibrating our

understanding of ourselves and our bodies. Bonnie, I should finally get down to just sort of the,

the biology. Okay. So when we're talking about muscles, what actually are we talking about?

There are three types of muscles. And what are they made out of? You know, give us the 101.

So I think most of us remember from biology class that, you know, we have three different

types of muscles in our body. Cardiac, smooth and skeletal and cardiac is, of course, heart muscle.

Smooth is like the muscles that power our, you know, our blood vessels and our digestive

trying, you know, things that we don't necessarily, we don't have voluntary control over. And skeletal

muscle is, you know, as it sounds like, are the muscles that move our body around, our skeleton around,

and they attach our bones and, you know, get us where we want to go. And these are the ones that

we have voluntary control over. But there's always like a, there is actually, you know, a really

a range of like conscious and unconscious, sort of like control over all of our muscles really,

like it's less, you know, divided, I think in some ways. Then we might think, but those are

the rough categories. And, you know, all the muscle tissue is a little different. But when we talk

about skeletal muscle, which is skeletal muscle fibers are long and skinny. Then when they need

energy to move, like mitochondria and those muscle cells, and we think about mitochondria, I think,

being the powerhouses of the cell, right? Yeah. So when we need that energy, the mitochondria

send an electrical charge across those membranes to convert nutrients into ATP, which is used to

contract muscles. And so that's why mitochondria is called the powerhouses cell, because it's really

about like powering us through the world. In general, we also have, you know, fast twitch and slow

twitch muscle fibers. And I think people know a little bit about that too, which is, you know,

in general muscles with fast twitch fibers are ideal for like, you know, sprinting power movements.

You know, we think about our hamstrings, right, on the back of our thigh, which are used for sprinting.

And also, this is a little weird, because they, if I give you an analog to like white muscles,

or white meat, like chicken, because they are analogous to that, because they appear lighter

in color. And so like, you know, in a chicken breast like that, that, you know, that muscle is

fast twitch muscle. And so then why do they appear lighter in color, though?

It's because they get their fuel from glycogen. And so that's like stored glucose. And I think

we all understand probably again, from biology class, that that's like the quick storage,

quick access storage of glucose, when you need quick energy, so when you're sprinting. And so

it requires less oxygen. And so it has fewer blood vessels. So it's not as red. And so like, slow twitch

fibers are good for endurance. And they are known as red muscle or dark meat, because they need a

lot of oxygen. And so they have a lot of blood vessels. And they also have a lot of myoglobin,

which is like the oxygen binding protein blood that gives muscles that reddish color. And so

yeah, it's, I hope everyone didn't fall asleep just then, because I'm like your biology, or your

apiocletal, you know, teacher. No, I guarantee you, everyone was doing what I was just doing

again, once just looking at my own aging body, but still as a marvel, as you described all of those

aspects or characteristics of muscle. So Bonnie, hang on for just a second. We have a lot more to

talk about in, or I should say on the other side of this break, we'll be back. This is on point.

Your little one grew three inches overnight. Adorable. Also expensive. Sell their pint-sized pieces

on Deepop and list them in minutes with no selling fees. Because somewhere, a dad refuses to pay

full price for the clothes his kid will outgrow tomorrow. And he's ready to buy your son's

entire wardrobe right now. Consider your future growthspurt budget secured. Start selling on Deepop,

work taste, recognizes taste. Payment processing fees and boosting fees still apply. See website for

details. America leads the world in medicine development. It matters. We get new medicines first,

nearly three years faster. Five million Americans go to work because we make medicines here at home,

and not relying on other countries keeps us safe. But China is racing to overtake us. Will we let them,

or will we choose to stay ahead? When America leads America cures. Let's tell Washington to keep us

in the lead. Learn how at AmericaCures.com. Pay for by Farma.

In Bonnie's book, she does point out that up until about the age of 10 years old boys and girls

have pretty similar bodies and physical abilities, but then of course puberty kicks in. And in adulthood

on average, Bonnie, I'm just quoting you directly here, men have 80% more muscle mass in their

upper body than women do and 50% more muscle mass in their legs. And so this is one of the reasons

why even in modern times in public, when we think of sort of idealized musculature, we often think

of men. But Bonnie asks in her book, what happens when a woman steps in? And that brings Bonnie and us

to the story of Jan Todd, a powerlifting legend. In my prime, I could hold a thousand pounds in my

hands at the top of a deadlift. I could put my shoulders under the side of my Ford Fiesta,

and I could lift the side of the car off the ground. And I can still do weird things like

bend bottle caps with my fingers. Even though I'm now in my 70s, I still practice that from time to

time just thinking, I'm never now now when it'll be the last one. These days, Jan chairs the

Department of Kinesiology and Health Education at the University of Texas at Austin. She got her

start weightlifting in 1973. I did appearances for different people, like for the Guinness World Records.

I did some appearances for them at State Fairs. I did the Johnny Carson show.

My next PSS instinct for being the strongest woman in the world.

Live, on stage, Jan deadlifted 415 pounds, a new women's world record.

Good, happy. If I try that every organ in my body would be lying somewhere on the stage over there.

No, you just have to know how. Oh, what sure. You can also fly by yourself if you know the secret.

In the summer of 1979, Jan tried for another world record. In Scotland, she attempted to become

the first woman to lift the dini stones. Two boulders that together weigh about 740 pounds.

And one of the things that I knew was going to be complicated for me was that the one stone is

larger than the other. And so it weighs over 400 pounds alone. And they have rings in the top.

They're small rings. And so when you're pulling on them, they're actually really cutting into your

fingers. I try it once. The front one comes up easily. The back one is like dragging on the ground,

but it's not leaving the ground. And I'm disappointed, you know, put them back down,

try again in just a second. And then I'm really frustrated. And so I take a walk away.

Jan takes a breath. She walks toward the nearby river. Then her husband Terry walks over and

reminds her of something that had happened earlier in their trip. A Scottish official had offered

whiskey to all of the men traveling with Jan, but he didn't offer any to her.

And Terry comes over to me and he said, I know you're thinking about this, but I want you to take

your next attempt. And I want you to remember the whiskey man as we were calling him. And I did.

And then I lifted him up. And they didn't come up very far because they don't have to.

They have an expression in the Highlands. It counts as a lift as long as you can feel the wind

beneath the stone. And then there wasn't another woman who did that till 39 years, something later,

something like that. So I was a very, very long time.

Jan's husband, Terry Todd, is actually how she found her way to weightlifting in the 1970s.

He was a champion powerlifter himself. I did not do sports to speak of in any meaningful way

in high school, because I went to high school before Title IX pass. And so this really started out

with, you know, me following my boyfriend and then my husband to the gym. And then I met a young

woman in Austin, Texas in 1973. And I saw her and she was doing deadlifts. And as we talked,

she encouraged me. And then I found I could deadlift the 225 with no trouble.

Jan Todd went on to help launch women's powerlifting as a US sport. She helped organize the first

women's meet in April 1977. For the first several years, if you went to a contest, they were normally

run by men's rules. And like men's rules don't allow you to wear a bra. There were some cases where

women would show up to compete. And then somebody would say, Oh, well, you can't wear that.

The second issue then came up. Well, if you had a bra, could you have a bra with an underwire in it?

Is if that would somehow make you bench press more, right?

There are young women now who can pick up the 418 pound Hussifl stone in Iceland and carry it

for long distances. There are a number of women deadlifting over 600 pounds. That would not have

even been imagined back when I began training. We don't gender speed, right? It's okay for girls

to be fast. And we don't gender flexibility or a lot of other things. Muscle is muscle. And I think

and hope that women in the future will continue to celebrate the idea that it is okay to be strong.

Well, that's Jan Todd, pioneer powerlifter and current professor at the University of Texas

at Austin in the kinesiology and health education department. Bonnie, you write at length

about Jan. What is it about her that you wanted to celebrate so much in the book?

I love Jan. She is not only a person who could talk about what it felt like to occupy a body that

could do all of these extraordinary things as she talked about in this interview, but also what

it meant to be a woman who was doing this in that time when women were not doing these things, you know.

And she told me, you know, kind of context of when when she was coming up, she said, you know,

my dad didn't let me do ballet because he said it would make my legs too muscular. She was a fast

kid when she was in elementary school and her grandma would say, oh, you don't want to be running too

fast because you don't want the boys to think that you're faster than they are. She is a sports

historian. She still also directs the Arnold strong man and strong woman contests every year. And

you know, she is the reason that there is an Arnold strong woman contests to begin with. You know,

women have only been doing these things, these public demonstrations of strength for a very short

time compared to the men like within Jan's lifetime, but there's still a lot. We don't know a lot.

We don't know about women's capabilities. In terms of accepting that, you know, women can and

should be building their muscles, we have come a long way. Yes. But again, biologically though,

men do have more muscle mass, right? And they do have a more a higher sort of a hormonal propensity

to grow muscle faster, right? So I mean, I think it's still a fair statement to say that like,

literally speaking, on average, men are stronger than women. Or is that not fair to say anymore?

Well, I think it is a reality because it's just like, evolutionarily, what biology has done.

I mean, it just is biology. Exactly. Right. And it's also, you know, you look across animal

species. Oftentimes, there's a size differential in the male or the female of the species

because of these, you know, evolutionary reasons like where where there are roles to occupy.

And, you know, in some species, you know, in rapture species, the females are larger because they're

the ones who are doing the, you know, the hunting of food or like warning of predators. And so,

you know, there are reasons that this is true. And in the human species, you know, like, of course,

across human history that has been true for men and women and that, you know,

these public demonstrations of strength have really skewed towards men.

But it's a public demonstration of a specific kind of strength, right?

And that's the other thing I take from your book, though, because, you know,

talking about all the different kinds of muscles. In terms of sort of what we idealize,

it's only one kind of strength that gets that that place in our culture, whereas, you know,

bodies that are also using muscles but in different ways are, you know, actually quite equally

remarkable, but we just may not, you know, look at that as, oh, here is the, you know, the picture

of strength. I mean, honestly, I'm going to be selfish and say, I think of like moms all the time

as pictures of strength, but that's not necessarily what pops to mind when we talk about that.

Yeah, exactly. Like, you're absolutely right, you know, picking up a heavy thing.

You know, that's a very, I don't know, like, it's an out ofistic thing. And also,

and it is funny to kind of think about even today how we, when we see that happen in front of us,

we applaud it and we, you know, we have a response to it, I think, all of us do.

But you're right. Like, strength is, you know, you can talk about strength in many different ways

across many different kinds of bodies and also things that you want to be doing.

You know, one of the things about modern life where for all the wonderful technologies we have,

I'm thinking about the car especially in terms of reducing the burdens on our body, the downside is

that we used to live lives at just in the natural course of a day. We were working our muscles

more than we are now. I'm sitting in a chair right now. Me too. And so that's why we've had to

refocus on sort of intentional exercising of our muscles. But I also want to just quickly ask you,

you mentioned this before, there's a lot of medical research right now on the importance of

strength training. That's being translated into the media in a way that I frequently see headlines

that say, if you want to be a super agent or do this one thing, right? And it's, and it's strength

training. Are we at the risk of over-promising what strength training can do?

I don't think so. I do want to pull that apart a little bit by saying like when you see the headlines

that are like, you know, live forever. If you want to, you know, you know, eat, you have to eat

this much protein or you need to do this. And these are the five things you should be doing.

I hate that. I don't like that messaging because it's like it's a secret and it's not a secret

that you need to make your muscles strong to, you know, be able to do everything that you

want to be doing as you get older. And that's for all of us. And I also want it to feel for everyone

that muscle is for you, you know, like no matter what age you are, no matter what gender you are,

you know, no matter what your experience is with exercise or lifting weights that it is something

that all of us can be doing in some way to move our bodies to, you know, to really like also for

joy. I don't want to, I don't want to forget about the joy element because that's what really

movement is. And we all need access to that. Absolutely. I mean, it takes me back to what our

listeners were saying about just how wonderful they feel as human beings have been doing this.

And I just want to note to everyone also that if you haven't done any kind of strength training

before, don't start without supervision from a professional or your doctor. But on that note,

Bonnie's soy's book is on muscle, the stuff that moves us and why it matters. Bonnie, thank you so

much for the book. And thank you for joining us. It was such a pleasure to be with you, Magna. Thank

you. I'm Magna Chakrabardi. This is on point.

This latest war is not the first time Iran has dominated U.S. headlines.

The administration mindset about risky covert operations was established long before anyone

thought of selling arms to Iran. And Iran is one of the world's oldest continuous major

civilizations. I'm Deborah Becker that complex and rich history of Iran that's on the next

on point.

Security program on spreadsheets, new regulations piling up and audit dread. It's time for Vanta.

Vanta automates security and compliance brings evidence into one place and cuts audit prep by

82%. Less manual work, clear visibility, faster deals, zero chaos, call it compliance, or call it

calm clients. Get it? Join the 15,000 companies using Vanta to prove trust. Go to vant.com.