not kind of technically you were well technically you could in a marathon you could wear you can wear any trainers you like in a marathon you can write you can't actually there we go you heard it here first folks on the bought the t-shirt so they were and it's partly because of this to our marathon that they brought in these new rules because basically they were Nike were building up these these shoes with in effect kind of a very springy foam inside them that we're getting more and more stacked to the point where it was starting to get very ridiculous Adaran and how are you sir I'm good thank you good to be here yes it seems funny that we're only we're actually for our friends at home we live quite near to each other all we've just found out so 20 miles away so I should have just put the the kettle on instead what an absolute honor Adaran and thank you so much just I'm gonna do a very brief explanation then you can correct me on all the stuff I've said that's wrong okay but what friends when I was getting ready to run the length of the country which I just made a sort of rash decision to do I started to learn there was some wonderful literature out there about the actual physics and chemistry of running itself being an ex-marine we just put our boots on and ran and I swear I knew nothing more than that I didn't know about heel strike as opposed to forefoot strike I didn't know about posture I wasn't aware that some of the top runners in the world are completely vegan which just again it was all part my learning curve and one of the books I read was this fabulous one called Running with the Kenyans which really put you in the heart of of the world's best runners put you in there in their trainers excuse the pun and I'm absolutely delighted today to have the author Adaran and Finn on the bought the t-shirt podcast there we go friends at home I'll put a link for this below the video and Adaran and you're you're obviously legendary in the running world I you I you first were writing for runners world you've written for some of the big broadsheet newspapers and you now run a running retreat which will will will promote will promote that as well how how did it start yeah I mean so yeah you were I was a journalist I was writing for runners world magazine I was also writing for the Guardian and not all it's not all my writing was about running but I was I was I was into running I was interested I used to be a big serious when I was a teenager I kind of ran national trials and stuff national cross-country and all that kind of stuff so it always been in the back of my mind that I really kind of something I wanted to get back into but life had kind of just whizzed by I was about 35 working living in London working in London and I was writing feature articles for the newspapers and I I had this idea I wanted to write a book and I was looking for a subject basically and then I just kind of kind of started basically looking for a book to read about Kenyon Manners I'd always been fascinated by the Kenyon Manners as a child I'd followed them I'd been really amazed by them but I realized I knew nothing about them I knew nothing about their lives what they were like they just kind of ran on the track I saw the money on the track and then disappear and I didn't know anything else and I realized there wasn't a book about the Kenyon runners which to me seemed a bit mad and I just this idea took a few years really to germinate this idea that because initially I had this idea to go to Kenyon run a marathon in Kenya and maybe meet a few of them but then the idea to actually stay and train and perhaps get more serious about my running because I've been quite serious as a junior but never as an adult and just to see what I could do I had this kind of feeling that perhaps you know I if I never ran a marathon for example I kind of have a slight regret especially if I left it till I was too old to run what I would have considered a decent time and I didn't even know what that was at that point I still had to work out what that meant but I felt as someone who could have been a serious runner I wanted to pose some kind of decent marathon time which I then decided was under three hours which is generally considered you know sub three hours is considered you know obviously nowhere near elite level but but a decent decent kind of shot so I had this idea to run a marathon train live in Kenyon and somehow managed to convince a publisher to give me the money to go out there the other thing I did I decided I had three small children and and my wife my wife's sister lived in Kenya already so she was quite keen to come out and we just in the end decided to go out the five of us for the whole time the whole six months went out there for six months and we lived in this amazing little town called Iten up in the Rift Valley there's about 40,000 people live there so it's kind of a small town about the size of Totnes where I live now but there's about 2,000 professional or full-time runners in this one tiny town so in Totnes it's probably like maybe 20 amateur runners here you've got 2,000 runners and of all those 2,000 runners including the young junior women I was the slowest by quite some distance so it was quite a baptism of fire but such an amazing place to spend six months as a runner and the people were incredibly welcoming and just you know I you just could turn up on you know there were certain street corners where groups would meet and you were told just turn up there 6am stand on the corner the group will come they'll take you off and in those groups there were world record holders or Olympic champions and you just mix in with them and as long as you went on the easy day of course you went on a hard day then you could meet them but you wouldn't last very long in the run but they would do a lot of easy runs as well so I'd make sure I picked the easy day and just off we go off on a 15 mile run or something and yeah it was wonderful so that's where it began. Had you been in Africa before? No well I no not really I've been to Morocco which is a kind of completely different world but no I hadn't hadn't ever been to that part of Africa and had no real experience of it and potentially was a little bit naive but I think that that paid into my favor in a little way I think I think if you've been too like a lot of people were worried people who knew Kenya were worried that we were just going to live in a local house in this small town with three small children they thought it would be dangerous but we just kind of did it because we didn't really think too much about it and it was fine it was totally we got to know the neighbors the children would disappear in the morning and we'd go we'd after a few hours later we hadn't seen the children we'd be wandering around the neighborhood looking for the children they'd be sitting in someone's house like drinking tea and watching usually like sermons on the TV so yeah it was totally welcoming but in a way the naivety probably helped I think a little bit how did you avoid getting stomach upset because obviously that's a one of a one of a runner's worst nightmares yeah it didn't really do anything particular we mean we ate in the local some of the local cafes and stuff I mean I guess we probably wouldn't have eaten salad there's one thing not to do we we did have bottled water the whole time at least to drink I mean we were showering and washing in the regular water but yeah we didn't we didn't go to great lengths to avoid it I mean the town where the runners live is a quite high altitude I don't know if that affects the water or not but it generally there's less sense of I think a lot of things a lot of illnesses in places like Africa come through the heat you know that increases then the mosquitoes increases the I don't know a lot of the a lot of illnesses thrive in in hot humid conditions so we were in a at high altitude the air is very thin it feels very fresh so we didn't there was no worries about mosquitoes there was no worry we didn't really worry about anything and we were fine we didn't get any illnesses at all so yeah we totally cruised through so going back to your marathon attempts what what is your your best marathon time so now it's 250 but I did do after Kenya I did my first marathon so I did I did do a marathon in Kenya which was uh it's called the Laywa marathon and it takes place in a wildlife conservancy so the actual it's so it's hilly and it's dusty and it's an altitude and it's hot also not that it affects your time but there are like lions and cheetah and rhinoceros is roaming around so you've got to be a little bit wary that would probably make you faster would you probably make you faster I didn't see any lions although the race was delayed because there were lions on the course apparently and they had to they have these helicopters that kind of swoop down if the lions get too close and then I after the but uh after being in Kenya I went to New York around the New York marathon and that was my first proper road marathon so the one in Kenya is very slow it's all on dusty trails so I did that in 255 which was that was my first proper go at it and yeah I was quite pleased with that so and then I've done lots lots more since but 250 is the other best yeah to put it in um what's the word into context for for people that aren't runners I I did the sixth month training that you get when you find out that you've got a place in the London Marathon or actually I didn't get a place so I immediately went to a charity and I I ran it for um as you ran for prisoners with um substance misuse issues and the time you get between finding out you've got this place and the actual race itself is six months so that's your your window I trained as hard as I could without overtraining so I was running three I I I always run either three times or four times a week when I'm training for events so I got a bit of recovery time and again obviously ex-marine and even then I was utterly delighted to cross the line and click my stopwatch and I was 356 so I got under the fabled if basically the idea is if you're over four hours you must have walked some or you're you're quite a you know a slow runner shouldn't say rubbish that's that's rude but sub three hours is sub three hours is incredible the sub two hours that I think we've just seen is it's the stuff of legend I mean it it it don't that is bordering on miraculous with would you agree yeah it really is I mean I I I was I still run quite seriously and I you know I was doing some mile reps the other night and the fastest one I did was about five minutes 20 so that that's me doing one mile flat out and like you say you know sub three hour marathon is is pretty decent runner by by kind of non professional standards and I was still a minute just on that one mile a minute slower than his average pace for the whole marathon so he's like to go at that two hour marathon pace you're basically even a serious kind of club runner like me is sprinting for like a hundred meters sprint yes at the pace he's running the whole marathon and looking relaxed doing it as well he's not sprinting the whole marathon he can he can move a sprinting face without sprinting just by being so efficient in his movement so relaxed so fluid and so yeah so so Elliot and lots of the Kenyans like him people I met in Kenya I met Elliot Kipchogi in Kenya and I didn't run with him but I ran with a lot of his teammates people who'd run quite close to two hours and they just float you know they just there's no effort at all they they're using the ground they're using gravity they're using elastic energy and they're just you're you're putting in all the effort you know you're like whoa and they're just looking at you gliding along next to you like no effort at all it's amazing yeah it's almost as if they become a wheel as opposed to like a hammer hammer which would be which would be which would be me yeah what what do we think about that attempt you're always going to get the die hard to come out and criticise stuff aren't you it I'm right in thinking it was kind of a bit of fun but we've also a sort of serious scientific attempt to break the two hour mark and use everything that that you that not kind of technically you were well technically you could in a marathon you could wear you can wear any trainers you like in a marathon you can run you can't actually there we go you heard it here first folks on the bought the t-shirt so they were and it's partly because of this two hour marathon that they brought in these new rules because basically they were Nike were building up these these shoes with in effect kind of a very springy foam plate inside them that were getting more and more stacked to the point where it was starting to get very ridiculous well it you know depending on your viewpoint it's it's it is ridiculous or it was getting ridiculous but either way the the governing body put a limit on how high this how stacked this spring can be and they also made a rule that you to run a marathon your shoe so this is not going to be a problem for an amateur runner but for a professional runner their shoe has to be available on the on the mass market the company can't be making a special shoe just for that runner which is what was happening there so earlier did have a special shoe which was not available to anyone else so he was actually breaking rules but but it wasn't like cheating because they were openly breaking the rules in that in that instance so they were saying that we're not this is not the world record this is not a real race we're just doing it to see if we can get under two hours so so yeah so he he did have assistance that you couldn't get in a normal race I mean they're all small things like normally in a race you've got to pick up your own water bottle now that involves slowing down grabbing it picking up now that only you're only going to lose two or three seconds also but there's a little bit of slowing down speeding up which takes a little bit of effort but if you're doing that over the course of a marathon that could add up to one or two minutes now as they were trying to break you know the world record was at that point was about 203 so they were just trying to break three minutes off the record so they were taking all these very small shortcuts which wouldn't be allowed in a real race so it became a slightly yeah controversial thing from that point of view and for me personally I felt like marathon running so since so I went to Kenya in 2011 and since then the world record had been broken in the men's marathon about four times four five times and there was an incredible group of athletes who were really battling it out and they got the marathon world record down almost every year it was being broken and my problem with it was I felt like this is was already one of the most exciting times of marathon running you had these amazing runners going head to head and it was like Nike said now that's that's not interesting to us we want to break two hours because and in a way they had a point because although I was loving it most of the world were oblivious to the fact that Kenyans were breaking the marathon world record it was it didn't have the same kind of jazz mataz that that Nike brought to this sub-breaking too they called it but I kind of felt like they were undermining what was already going on that there was already this amazing scene of these athletes doing incredible incredible performance and then the second thing that bothered me is that it was being led by Nike so like people often compared it to Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile but that was Roger Bannister himself kind of instigating that he felt it was possible there were other athletes trying to do it it wasn't a shoe company coming in and saying forget all the other competition this is now all about us and we're going to break the two hour record and so I did have a problem problem with it in a way but what I loved is that when it actually happened it was quite clear that this guy this Kenyana was actually the star of the show that it wasn't about the shoes because you had all the other guys were in the same shoes and they were dropping out dropping in dropping out and struggling to keep up and he was just so serene and so brilliant that I think he did kind of transcend the event in a way and and he did kind of become the star that he he deserved to be so it all worked out well in the end I think and I think when Roger Bannister crossed the line he from what I remember he seemed to look like he was just about to die of exhaustion this guy am I pronounced is it Elliot Elliot yeah Kipchoge Elliot Kipchoge yeah when he crossed the line he wasn't even breaking a sway he didn't he just immediately started speaking to the camera as though it was yeah you thought hang on you got more to give I mean it is partly if you're to be honest you probably are going to be more in there running a mile but even for me or you you're probably going to be more out of breath crossing the line running a mile than a marathon weirdly because you're you're running it in a different way you're running in that oxygen depth because you're you're really pushing the pace whereas in a marathon you're running a threshold pace where you're kind of you have to to run that distance otherwise you wouldn't make it but saying that he did look ridiculously easy afterwards yeah I mean he was he was running at a set pace which was to break the two-hour barrier and you could see with about a mile to go he he was itching to speed up and he was already running this incredible pace and he was just smiling and looking around and yeah it was it was phenomenal he's a phenomenal athlete and and a lot of it's about his mind as are he's incredibly strong mentally because there's lots of runners in Kenya and Ethiopia just as talented and and much ability it's him but he combines it with an incredible mindset where he just kind of goes into this tunnel vision and he's just completely like he lives this amazingly simple lifestyle so he still washes after training with a bucket of cold water that's his shower he cleans his own shoes he's he lives in this running camp where he shares a room with a very thin mattress no pillow you know he this guy's you know he's worth even in in what you know in English money he's worth millions you know I don't know 20 30 million pounds yeah he lives like I mean it's very nice where they live the lawns very nicely kept it's very clean but it's incredibly simple they eat beans and and rice or just this thing or garlic which is maize flour kind of cornmeal and green leafy vegetables cup of milk very simple very simple lifestyle and I think he you know he would say this is what keeps him sharp a lot of the great Kenyan runners once they make it you know they start living more elaborate lifestyles and then they disappear where he's been around for so long partly because he he maintains the the kind of monk like lifestyle it's it's just beyond incredible and there's a lesson there for all of us isn't there yeah yeah exactly I mean yeah simplicity that's the amazing thing about the Kenyans is and that's what I love about running in a way is that you know in this modern world we in the west we have all these advantages we have all this you know these great ways of doing everything but when it comes to running actually usually the simplest way the the kind of most rudimentary way is actually the best and what I love Nike then sent a team of kind of sport scientists to Kenya to analyze Elliot Kipchogi's training and then there's a film about this and they go to Kenya and they're like we're going to analyze this training we're going to marry this kind of raw talent as they saw it with with the sophistication of the you know Nike scientists and so they watched him for a few weeks training and they realized no we we're not going to change anything nothing you know it's what he's doing is so beyond what we what we would have like come up with it's just he's so in tune him and his coach were so in tune with each other the way they their whole day had this rhythm around the training and the resting and the sleeping they just could not find and they thought it would be dangerous to try and tinker with it because it was so perfect and this was all done instinctively they were just living a very simple life getting up training before so they do simple things like they get up and they run before they eat now that is kind of you know whoa latest science you know run run on a faster state but they just do it because it feels right they know that feels good but then they won't do a hard session like that so they know that as well they know you do the easy runs faster you do the hard sessions you need fuel so they have this kind of instinctive approach to how to train which yeah it's wonderful and it all comes down to simplicity you know it's just the their training sessions their interval sessions are incredibly simple they'll do like one minute hard one minute easy one minute hard one minute easy or two minutes hard one minute easy you know they don't have complicated sessions where run five minutes at this pace three minutes at this pace seven minutes it's just easy there's easy medium and hard three faces and yeah so anyway I love the simplicity of it all yes we're we're very deluded in in the what I say or I always say the west but it's not it's become a global thing I think we're very deluded about nutrition and diet um when I when I was doing the joggle the the the run in the UK I'd wake up someone as I just had no food and I had maybe two inches of water left in the in the water bladder and it was 18 miles to the first cafe and you just run you just run the same as I did a an 18 day fast so I just drank water for 18 days um not while running the joggle no wait no no but what I did do just almost to sort of dispel this myth that when you do a marathon you've got to be loaded up with with bandoliers of energy gels and yeah buckets of lucasade and you've got to eat pasta for 75 years before you even consider putting your application just to dispel I ran two miles having not eaten for 15 days and um I wouldn't recommend it because I can't say how was it well the run was you feel a bit lightheaded at that stage it you know I have to be honest but it's easily achievable I mean I think our ancestors must have had to cover vast distances in times of hardship or bad weather or drought or or food scarcity and glaciers and all this sort of stuff I think they would have had to have gone for weeks without possibly weeks covering enormous distance so I think it's if we're here today this ability's in our DNA we're we're we're it's probably getting bred out of us now by the way that society's become so much easier but yeah I wouldn't recommend it simply because when your body's that depleted you probably could do some serious serious damage but I just wanted to show people you don't have to worry when you run you don't have to worry about your trainers your energy gels I'm aware in the right stuff have I got you know do I need a gps no just comfortable parachutes out the front door I never carry water when I run if I'm going to run that far I just take my bank card and I stop at a petrol station and grab a bottle of water I always drink sparkling water the summery yeah then you've got the full range of choice of anything you feel like at that moment haven't you yes you've got your bank card including a taxi yeah yeah I mean I went to watch some like kids races in Kenya and they're you know the kids all running barefoot but there was one race in particular the the junior women's race and the girl who won was kind of running in her Sunday best dress and like they were quite serious athletes she actually got signed up by Nike after the race so it was a it was a big high level competition but she just turned up didn't have any running gear ran in this dress and won the race and look quite look quite strange because all the other athletes were in running gear and she was wearing this really elaborate Sunday best dress but just trounced them all I worked in Mozambique for six months and taught in a street children's school and when we have football matches the guys would rock up and if the ones that were lucky enough to have footwear would take one shoe off and give it to their mate so the whole team just had one shoe so if you're a a striker with your right foot you you you were lucky if you got the right but maybe you didn't you just got the leg um but I wanted to mention uh to mention that at Darinand the when I first started doing half marathons probably over 30 years ago now people would rock up wearing jeans and and and like they're off it off her shoes and you you you'd not not a lot of people but you'd see it was just the science of running wasn't really there back then now when you go to your local half marathon it's usually um won by somebody from from Africa uh how is that are they trying to get their kind they're trying to build their build their careers and their reputations yeah I mean well like yeah I mean there's so I mean there are races in Kenya obviously but one thing they're incredibly uh competitive as you could imagine so you turn up things you turn up but like I don't know the great south run or something or or even the smaller race like you know uh I know the Bristol Half Marathon although there's 20 000 people in the race if you're a Kenyan really there's like two or three people in that race who might give you a race where you turn up a race in Kenya and there's 500 people in that race they could all beat you like potentially so you know it so so so to win a race in Kenya is pretty hard but a lot of them are posting pretty good times they're running they're training well they're you know even if they come 50th in a race in Kenya they're not going to win any money but they might get picked up by a manager who says well you came top 50 that's pretty good let's send you to Bristol for example let's send you to the Bristol Half Marathon and so then you know if you win a race at the Bristol Half Marathon or even come top five you probably win some money so there's two things so hey they're trying to win some money to bring back home to kind of feed the families and then I mean the money can be quite good I friend of mine I managed to get him over to run the Edinburgh Marathon he came second and he bought a piece of land back in Kenya with that and he's building a little house on it so I mean I think he won like two and a half thousand pounds or something but that is that is a big it's a lot more money in Kenya so that's one thing they're trying to do the other thing is post fast times because it's hard to post a fast time in Kenya because either it's if it's a low altitude it's very hot and if it's a high altitude it's hard to post fast time but to get into these big races you need fast time so if you like if you're a Kenyan guy in in Kenya you you know 64 minutes for example for Half Marathon is good is very good in Kenya but then you could come to Bristol and run 60 minutes now 60 minutes is good globally so then you know then the Amsterdam marathon for example which is a big one you know your manager can go oh this guy ran 60 minutes in Bristol you know maybe you should try him in the Amsterdam marathon and then they obviously they have a lot of people trying to get into their races but there's a lot of big city races marathons and half marathons all over the world and so you kind of progress up the ladder and and kind of the London is one of the biggest the London marathon is one of the biggest races so you get the top Kenyan stars and Ethiopian stars I've kind of progressed through races like Bristol then to Amsterdam and they end up somewhere like London or New York and so that's the dream is to kind of make it on that progression but a lot of them get you know the winning the Bristol the Great South run or the Bristol Half Marathon or I don't know the Prague Half Marathon or something is is the level they get to but if they win three or four of those races in a year or in a couple of years they're kind of still set up for life really back in Kenya so the incentives are pretty high for them to find the races and it's all done through managers and most of the managers are Europeans or Americans actually very few Kenyan managers it's quite tricky with the visas and everything because the managers have to travel around a lot as well so so yeah there's so there's European I think they're all men actually I was going to say men and then almost check myself but I think they are all men all the managers so you got these European men living in Aten or at least going there quite regularly to they have their scouts on the ground and then signing up anyone who looks like they've got potential and then getting them over to Europe or America or even South America and Asia you know there are races everywhere except Kenya's like the only place where it's really hard to a hard to win and hard to get a fast time so they've got it the big challenge is to is to get abroad and race anywhere really is and did I if my memory serves correctly from your wonderful book was our sort of synopsis so the reason these guys and girls run so well was a combination of running from from childhood so they'd run run to school for example yep good style as in they'd run they used to running bare from a young age so they had good form yep a simple simple new nutrition or the right nutrition should I should I say and then and then of course I suppose there's biological factors being being born as an African or a Kenyan in this case and then of course there's the altitude which must tune that tune the body or the blood cells to a higher level was was I right in thinking that yeah so they're all they're all factors and then almost one of the biggest ones is what we were just talking about in the fact that the incentives are so high so for you think for a British a British guy in his early 20s you know if he's going to train hard enough to compete with the Kenyans and potentially win the Bristol half marathon and it's it's possible you know and it's going to be a lot of dedication a lot of training a lot of time completely like you have to give his life over to 100% if you're going to compete with these Kenyans and you win two and a half thousand pounds you know it's like is it worth it you know it's not and then it's hard to build a life on that so you probably need to then get a part time job then that affects your training so it's very difficult where the fact that the money is worth so much more to the Kenyans means it's so much easier for them to and they've got so much other fewer other options so this this young British guy theoretical British guy may have done well at school so may have the option to go to university may think god you know I want to go out with my friends if I just got a job I'd have some money we could go out you know there's so many other options for him where this Kenyan guy his other option if he doesn't go for the running is probably to basically be a subsistence farmer digging the soil just to you know make enough food to eat basically and it's a hard life whereas if he can put everything into this training so the incentive to totally focus everything on his training in the hope of winning two and a half thousand pounds is huge so that the incentives are completely skewed in their favor and also the motivation and and the fact that there's so much more there's so much fewer other alternatives for them it's the only show in town that's why everybody in Kenya is running there's you know there's there's no people there was a guy trying to set up a cycling team in a tent and he because he figured well if you can run you can cycle like long distance so you've got the you've got the endurance but they were like what recycling now we don't cycle we've run as we're running everyone look at that guy he just won that massive car that guy so you know he's got a big house that guy's built a supermarket that guy's built a school I want to be like you know there's role models everywhere there's this kind of examples of success all around them but all in running nothing else so running is is like the only show in town so everybody is focused on running and and also that kind of creates this real special place to run as well because everybody's coming there to run and so you get up in the morning and everybody's running and so you know you don't have to think oh should I go for a run today it's people are kind of if you don't run if you didn't go for a run today people want to know why it's not like here where people say you know you run every day why do you run every day what's what's wrong with you there it's like you don't run every day what's wrong with you know it's like everything's flipped on its head so and there's inspiration everywhere there's you know you're out running and and the guy who won the London Marathon comes by and you just run along next to him and he chats to you and tells you yeah you know you can do it you keep training and you go wow it's amazing and so it's just such a different atmosphere almost to the point where I say in the book it's almost to the point when you're there you think how did anyone likes for example paul aracliffe who broke the world record in the marathon like living in like bedford in middle of england with like I know she did have a very good kind of group there actually interestingly enough and I think that's important I think having people to train with is very very rare that someone comes completely out of nowhere so even when you dig down to paul aracliffe's story she was a part of a very strong group of runners as a junior in her hometown we're all trained together and we're friends together but yeah it's kind of you kind of think how does anyone compete with this I mean it's just such a febrile fertile scene for running to produce running I mean it's just like yeah and then it's like the New New Zealand for rugby or you know India for cricket and brazil for football you know it's just but it's kind of even more intense because it's it's just I thought it was England for football oh well brazilian's other footballers I mean yeah I mean England's good as well but but it's true though if you want to be a good England are going to be good one day but but even joking aside if you you know in this country if you've got real talent as a footballer that's that's much more likely to be nurtured than talent as a runner because you know unless you're going to become Olympic champion in running there's not really much of a career path there whereas you know if you're good at football even if you end up in the second tier so you're only in the top 500 footballers in the country you're you're still still a pretty great pretty great life well well you know well paid and everything else is it to their detriment then I mean it sounds like it could be a case of care for what you wish for this enormous amount of money to somebody who comes from a culture where it's just really not I mean it's not even here but and I mean does it lead to sort of alcoholism or or substance use it's a really good question and there's I think it used to a lot more I think there were a lot more problems in the past when when they first started earning money and they realized people realized we've got to educate people about this I guess the also the more people who went off the rails acted as a kind of warning to young guys coming through I don't want to end up like him so there have been I mean yeah like like any any young person like you know you get stories in here don't you footballers who've got too much money and and particularly in the past doesn't seem quite as common now but you know people like Georgie Best is the is the classic example of people who kind of squander that talent and it definitely happens in Kenya there was a guy Samy Wanjiru who won the Olympic Marathon in 2008 in Beijing he was 23 he broke he'd already broken three world records he won the Olympic gold medal 23 few months later he was dead so he got he got into all sorts of trouble in the bars and got him with the Kenyan mafia and the whole thing went it's like a spiraling disaster movie so those things do happen but also Kenya is quite interesting in that the whole Kenyan system is not funded by anything other than the runners so the I mean the sponsors are obviously funding the top runners but there's a very that's a handful of the runners yet there's like I said there's like in this one town there's 2000 runners and there are lots of other towns as well so what's supporting all these runners where's that money coming from and it's actually coming from a lot of the big guys the successful runners are supporting the younger runners and they become kind of if they take it on board and with the right spirit they become kind of pillars of the community that the successful runners and they a lot of them build schools build hospitals they tend to build petrol stations as well for some reason business you know business that that last that that is going to provide for them after they run but then they also support the other athletes so you might get one successful athlete who has a team of about 20 other athletes who he looks after and they they all train together they work in for him it's useful as well because he has all these athletes who will train when he wants to train will do what he wants to do the sessions he wants to do leading up to the races he's doing but at the same time he's providing them with running gear food every day transport to him from training all sorts of things like that so so then for that there are examples of people who go off the rails and completely lose it but then there are there's quite an amazing that the Kenyan motto is Harambe which means all pulled together and there's a real sense of a Harambe in the in the running community in Kenya where they all you know they all help each other out and it's interesting because quite a few of them go to Japan and there's a there's a whole world of professional running in Japan and professional running in Japan and they sign up the Kenyan runners and they did this study in Japan where they were realizing the Kenyan runners were sending most of their money home and they thought oh we need to educate them we need to teach them that running career is short and so they need to keep that money and they need to invest it not send it back to Kenya to all the all the neighbors and the family and the other runners but the Kenyans weren't doing that because they were stupid they were doing that because that's how it works because that's when they were up and coming that's how they managed to keep training and there's this kind of feeder system where the people who are successful feed down to the people they call them the up and coming runners the up and coming runners get a lot of support what's tricky is that if you then get through your career and you don't make it there's a kind of gray area of kind of black blind spot there where the athletes who haven't made any success have trained 10 10 12 years come out the other end haven't made anything for themselves now nobody's going to support those guys because they're trying to support the young guys young guys and girls and so there is there is a kind of sad side to the Kenyan story which is the the ones who and that and it's a lot as well it it's could be over half of the runners train their whole you know well the whole lives but like 10 15 years probably capable of running you know winning big races in other countries but just never get the opportunity never quite do well enough to impress a manager never quite run the time they needed to or they get sent to there's some unscrupulous managers who basically send people off to races but then don't give them the prize money I mean you know and then so they don't get anything and so there's definitely a problem there but that's not really the question you ask but it is interesting there needs to be there's no kind of safety net for those people and then they go back with their tail between their legs back to their villages having been away for 10 15 years and come back empty handed and it's it's not it's not a good way you know then they get back to the farm but you know they're kind of wasted all those years and they've been supported as well so you know they feel bad they feel useless you know they no one wants to marry them you know it's it's a it's a it's a bad system in a way from that point of view but yeah so so it's a tricky it's tricky basically that's what I'm saying so I I can I can picture it it's um yeah sorry I'll just I'm just in my mind is I had a friend from Malawi so a little way from Kenya but it's a very different attitude there to um can we say promiscuity yeah and my friend because he'd studied with me in in in where we studied in Norway to become development instructors and then we drove to India and back together and one of another friend of ours went to visit to try to find him in Malawi he died of AIDS and I just conjured up this picture of him coming back from the sort of rich west being the the returning hero to his small village and then sleeping with every woman around and and then suffering the the you know the side consequence but yeah it can it can disrupt can disrupt the the ecosystem in a way when I think in when Kenya and the running it's different it might and I think that's what I say it was worse before but I think now it's kind of like the whole society has kind of found its its its place with it so there's so many of them it's not like this is one guy comes back and he's the you know he he's like the king he's like another one we've seen the before you know we've had we've had the concrete heroes come back and so we can we can deal with it but uh yeah I think especially if someone goes back to a remote village not not everybody is from this area in Kenya where the running is more common if that someone's from a more uh another part of Kenya where running is less common and they do well and they go back there yeah then the whole ecosystem around how their society works can can be disrupted and it's not always good for someone to win a lot of money or travel aboard and change change their mindset and yeah so it's it's tricky but I think Kenya's got to a point now with the running community at least where it's it's like its own it's its own like ecosystem it just works uh so which because I was asked a few times whether I would go and help runners in other countries and I I kind of felt like well there's that risk there's that risk that you're disrupting you know something that you don't really understand where in Kenya it's already there it's already there's this system is where they're I'm just going in you know and helping a couple of runners run but that's what everyone that's what this society is based on it's been built up around this understanding that guys are going to go off and come back with money that's what's supporting it that's what it's built on so it's uh it's a slightly different scenario in a way yes how how is the transition then for for these runners who've obviously grown up barefoot or for the most part barefoot I'm guessing they then have to put on a night or or an added ass training shoe is there like a favored brand is it is do they go for the low the what is it the what do you call it low heel or whatever it's yeah no I mean Kenya's basically you know if someone's going to give them a pair of shoes they'll take them you know and especially if a company is going to pay them to wear them they don't they don't care what brand it is really I mean it's you know if you're if you offered money to wear some shoes and you're a poor Kenyan guy yeah you're you don't you're not going to go actually up a fair Nike then then you know yeah I I gave a pair of um Nikes actually I think they were just running shoes they were a size too small for me so I I get really annoyed about things like that so I gave them to one of my students and I think they're about three sizes too small for him every day he'd rock up with the you know he's so proud of these shoes and you could see that his toes were curled up in the end and yeah there's a kind of real desire to I think being barefoot is seen as kind of poverty and unsuccessful and you know someone who's successful wear shoes in their mind so there's a real desire to put shoes on and and like you say even if they're three sizes too small it kind of feels like you've moved up a level somehow if you've got shoes on but there is a whole kind of science and and you're very born to run and there's a whole there's there's a whole kind of idea that you know they might be better off not wearing the shoes and and the Kenyan athletes themselves find this quite difficult to talk about because they'll tell you all day long about how running barefoot is children made them such good runners and then you say well why why not just stay barefoot and they're like oh what no we wouldn't do that that's the silly idea well like why not and like well because because you know you have to have shoes on they there's no real reason why they need to but and you can you can see they don't want to turn out when a baby Bacala Bacala turn up at the Olympics barefoot in 1960 yeah everyone was laughing at him I mean it is you know for us it's maybe not as much but if if a guy turned up at a race even a local race in barefoot you think oh he's a bit of an odd ball you know what's he doing he's got you know there is a kind of stigma attached to to being barefoot and for the Kenyans it's even worse the the chuff in the Olympics won didn't he yeah he broke the world record yeah yeah he won and broke the world record so I mean I'm not saying you you should wear run barefoot but definitely rather than shoes three's highs is too small you might might be better barefoot and and there is this so you like you say there is a transition to wearing shoes and and they do often find I remember Faith Kip Jagon I spoke to her and she won the world junior cross-country championships barefoot and then I spoke to her and she tried some shoes on she said I didn't like them I didn't like them I didn't want to run in them she's now Olympic she won the 1500 meters of the Rio Olympics so gold medals so she's now Olympic champion but she runs in shoes now so I guess she had to go she told me the first time she wore them she didn't like them and that was the time I spoke to her she she'd only ever tried a pair of shoes on but now she runs in them and I guess you just have to get used to them but and and these you know these new Nike shoes with the the big bouncy foam are definitely helping them run faster so there are some advantages to wearing shoes as well as being advantages to being barefoot but yeah it's they they see as a necessary transition to to move away from being barefoot even though you know there was a nice story the other day in South Africa some guy had got a lot of criticism because he broke a record wearing these new shoes and and a lot of people are doing that a lot of people are running great times and goes out it's because you've got your way in the fancy shoes so he decided to run next race with no shoes on just in bare feet and he broke his record again so you know it it's it's a tricky subject there's you know he if you need strong feet to run barefoot I mean I can't just go out and run barefoot my feet are just too soft and to you know I've lived too easy a life you know you have to walk around outside for a lot a lot of time barefoot you can you can toughen them up if you want but you've got to spend a lot of your time barefoot I tried it at Dharanand I I'm going to say here and now for our friends at home so when born to run came on the market wonderful but by Christopher McDougal suddenly people's paradigm shifted to hang on maybe wearing these nikes or nikes whatever your preferred term is maybe having these big thick bouncy heels and landing on your heels isn't actually in line with our human biology in our and our suspension and so the thinking went to landing on the forefront and going barefoot if possible to get your your style perfected as as you would as a child when a child walks barefoot they don't need shoes and that kind of stuff like well when I um red born to run I just immediately kick my shoes off I ran around the local field and the I I just instantly fell in love with it I running along the beach barefoot it's just incredible experience and I started to run around the streets of my city I think 12 um I think eight miles was the furthest I I ran and the problem isn't the things that people think like oh what if you tread on a nail or some dog muck or is you you don't do that because you don't do that anyway when you when you when you walk that isn't the problem the problem is is your feet can't toughen up enough quick yeah so rather than my feet get harder and my running get better my feet got more painful to the point where I started to develop um I think they're called bursitis their little cysts on the bony parts of your your foot you get these little sacks of fluid where your body's trying to protect itself and the bottom of my feet became so sore as if someone had taken sandpaper to them and then the the final insult to injury was I've been running on the track because I found it a lot easier to run barefoot on the track a lot less painful and I think the compression on my spine even though I changed my running style to the fore strike by this by this stage um it put my back out and that as anyone who knows my story knows that that delayed my joggle the the UK run for two years and I was in chronic pain for for over a year of that I was on opiates for two years um or the best part of two years and sadly you kind of have to join that argument that we we're kind of not right for you know unless you've done it for a lifetime yeah I mean yeah exactly I mean we we have basically our feet have got to the point where they yeah they're they're not it's not an easy thing to do it is possible though I have a friend who lives in star cross you'll know star cross uh Joe Kelly he runs everywhere barefoot and he he started a few years ago he doesn't run that often but he does everything barefoot and he and he can say he's actually run the dartmore discovery ultramarathon uh barefoot even though he's not a big one and he can just he can just do it but it's taken him years and years and years uh and yeah like I I'm just not someone who has that commit you have to be fully committed to the the whole idea of it you know I think walk around barefoot the whole time it's as big a lifestyle change as say having to learn to live in a wheelchair or yeah sorry that's probably a bit rude but I mean I used to be walking through town with my partner and I'd say hang on hang on a minute and I'd take my flip-flops off in the summer and then and it's a big thing and I'm not the sort of person that I don't care what other people think whereas I know a lot of people probably do and so it wasn't it it it wasn't an issue but I could see how it's quite probably a big thing for a lot of people yeah and you can get shoes that like you get minimalist shoes which are kind of like people who are really into barefoot will say it's not the same and there are lots of you know you you're not feeling the ground with every nerve ending in the same way but at the same time if you're not you know if you haven't been brought up in Kenya running around your whole childhood barefoot and you don't want to go through what you went through then though the but you still love the idea of a natural landing and and the whole minimal idea of the whole concept of barefoot running these minimal shoes can help there's you know lots of companies do the Viva barefoot it's a great company but they uh they're still it's still our bodies are still the way we run is still like we've developed our way running through wearing shoes and so to change your running form is still very complicated and complex and dangerous thing to do and you can still there's endless stories of people who start running in the barefoot style with the minimal shoes and get Achilles problems calf problems you you know you just it's a it's a huge process and takes a lot of commitment it is possible and I feel like I've been through that and I've done it but I did get I had quite a few years of Achilles problems you have to basically re-teach your body how to move re-show your body not just how to land on its forefoot but to move in many different ways it's a whole range of movement that's being compromised in a way by by wearing shoes all these years so it's it's and then you think well if someone's running twice a week and they're enjoying it you know let's not mess with that by telling them oh they should be wearing you know minimal shoes or should not be wearing shoes because the chance now you could cause more problems than then then you then you solve but saying that for a Kenyan it would be much easier because they can well up to a certain point then after they've been running in shoes for five or six years and they're just like we are their shoes their feet become softer but yeah there's also something you can't get away from as you get older especially if you don't hydrate as well as you should do which I have to confess not not not so I'd probably drink far too much tea but that's that the your the discs in your spine they kind of harden as they dehydrate over over as your this is what the the doctors were explaining when my back was bad is it as you get older it's almost like they harden so they go from the kind of jelly like state to a more solidified state I'm not sure if that's some sort of protection mechanism as you get older but to think you become more prone to prolapse discs and and that sort of thing I might I might might be wrong there what what what do we think a Darren and about a diet then because I'm I'm very happy to be sort of like 98% plant based now probably 95% plant based now hasn't affected my running in any way whatsoever except to make it me a much better runner what I'm very big on body's alkalinity I've been doing that for making sure that my pH balance is right for about 17 years now and when I first started I went from being a runner that was always exhausted in that first quarter of a mile I just couldn't it just really had to fight through the first quarter of a mile of a run to get into my flow and get my breathing and then feel ah this is this is fine now a bit like the running for a bus sort of feeling and when I became alkaline that that just goes and you just you go off like a rocket do you have any thoughts on that uh well I'm not I'm yeah I kind of always struggle a little bit with the the dietary question because so I was brought up vegetarians I've never eaten meat in my life and and can't really get my head around ever one trying trying it so I'm kind of so the whole idea of like the paleo diet where you eat lots of meat I just I can't even go there I don't even want to go there so and then the other diet is a kind of diet that I feel like my body's adapted to anyway which is lots of pulses and and vegetables and you know the kind of vegan vegetarian diet we didn't drink milk we didn't have eggs so it's we do we do have cheese and and yogurt so so I'm not fully vegan but I'm probably like you but I but I always have been since I was born so I don't feel like I'm a good example because maybe my body's adapted to okay can we can I ask how old you are uh 47 okay yeah you're looking well on it yeah I still got my hair yeah well it's not it's not it's not as gray as mine uh but what's interesting is the Kenyan diet I guess uh and they uh it is interesting so they're not because of any particular reason they just eat what they've always eaten because they seem to be able to run fast on it and they don't want to change it so they have this thing called Ugarli which is basically maize flour and water which they swear by it because it's partly because they look around what are we doing that no one else is doing are we eating Ugarli no one else eats Ugarli so that must be our secret so they eat a lot of Ugarli and eat it with this thing which is basically stewed kale which they every Kenyan training camp has a kale pack so they're growing the kale themselves so it's fresh it's organic they they stew it up and they have it with maize flour so that they have that every day that's a daily meal and then the rest of the time they're eating beans and rice potatoes avocados uh they do eat they do for some reason like uh just dry bread they dry bread for breakfast and then lots of tea and what's interesting about the tea is they have a lot of milk and sugar in it so I guess when you look at their diet it's not that high in sugar and fat and so I guess that's where they're getting their sugar and fat from it is the milky tea uh they put a lot of milk and a lot of sugar in their tea and that's it so it's basically vegetarian uh and almost vegan apart from the milk except then they they do eat meat they're not vegetarian and vegan so they eat meat in the very fancy training camps they might eat it even once a week but that's that's super fancy most of them will eat it about once a month and they will uh and then and then it's really safe for weddings and funerals and big occasions that's when because most people are eating the goat that they've got in the garden so you know they're not going to just kill it every week that's for the special that's for when their son gets married or whatever you know so uh and and I have quite a funny story because I went to visit one of the young guys I was helping to run run a marathon and I was going to be the special guest and this he lived in a really remote village it was quite a big deal that I was coming and uh my friend Godfrey a Kenyan guy told me he was laughing he said oh I I told him you were vegetarian he said he was so happy he didn't have to kill his goat so there you know and it was lucky I told him because if I told I hadn't told him I was vegetarian I turned out and he had killed his one goat for me that would have been very awkward but yeah so so that was so you know the so the meat eating is quite low obviously the Kenyans haven't decided this is the best diet this is why we're eating it they just eat it because that's the diet that's available to them and that's what they eat growing up that's what all the other runners are eating it's a kind of well this is working let's not mess with it but it is interesting that they're eating fairly low protein diet the protein really occasional meat whether beans and rice I guess has got some protein and then the milk but it's not high protein it's a very high carbohydrate diet mostly vegetarian mostly vegan so it's interesting definitely can work definitely you know you can run sprinting pace from marathon and look easy on it so uh yeah I think it's definitely possible at Darinan we've had the um the ultra running let's call it a phenomenon um we're now seeing the super the ultra ultra's which is um rate any races up to well races up to an even over 300 miles right what what do you think's next for running uh I don't know I think I mean so I don't know if you know I write after the Kenyan book I wrote two more books I've written a book about running in Japan and I've written a book about ultra running uh and so I think ultra running is still growing hugely and and you know I think I still feel that's that's on the up and that's becoming more popular and more people have become more aware of it and the people in the sport are becoming bigger and bigger stars uh beyond that I don't know I mean who knows who knows I mean it's quite interesting you think 50 years ago kind of the centerpiece of running was track running track running now almost seems like a kind of niche part of the sport you know who's running track it's all marathons and ultra marathons now maybe trail running and so I don't know I mean I quite quite used to like track running many years ago but I guess it is it's a it's a quite a difficult thing to get everyone involved in yeah I don't know is the answer I'm intrigued to find out but yeah there's uh there's ultra running there's marathons ultra ultra running I hadn't heard that expression though but yeah I know you mean the races just seem to get there's always someone doing something crazier right you hear about the but the Berkeley marathons do you hear about that race yes I've seen a couple of wonderful youtube videos on it I couldn't work out for the life of me what the hell was going going on especially when they're ripping pages out of books and stuff but I did gather that it's an incredibly traditional and what's the word extra eccentric kind of event it's very difficult I mean I think this they've just had it and nobody nobody finished the race I think that's like the third or fourth year in a row now nobody has finished the race so that's quite that's quite a tough race and nobody's finishing it I try well I ran 200 miles at Christmas I came up with this idea inspired by a friend of mine called James English who who gave up his Christmas to live homeless on the streets of Glasgow and he made a wonderful documentary about it and so in honor of James because he's a great guy I decided to run give up my Christmas to run 200 miles and I started on the 23rd of December or the 22nd and I ran around my local running track they very kindly gave me permission and they gave me their club club room and stuff it was great and I had this kind of crazy notion if I could do it in two days then I then I'll get home for Christmas because I called it running home for Christmas and we were raising money for veterans mental health charity you just ran around the track for 200 miles yeah well that was the idea yeah I'm a great believer when I do my adventures in the word I always have a plan B right isn't that isn't going to screw up the plan A sort of thing so basically I try to make them infallible and in this case after I'd run about the first marathon my body hurt so much I came down with so many all the injuries that I've avoided over the years so the torn hand the ripped hamstring torn calf muscle Achilles tendonitis in my left ankle so bad it was as if it had taken over the whole of that part of my foot as if it had gone solid it's very strange stuff when you think um when you think when I ran the length of the country the worst thing I had there was a shin splint which was really unpleasant and incredibly painful but other than that the rest of it was it was fairly easy easy easy running but this track was it like you know one of the all-weather tracks the red all-weather track yes it was and it was it was brand new as well so it was additionally springy yeah quite springy yeah and I think that I was kind of losing um I suppose energy to the springiness in a way but we we did the 200 miles um the track closed on Christmas Eve I think it was so I then had to go on the road and I just headed out to Dartmoor ended up running around Burritor during that really bad storm that hit on the 27th yeah and very kindly a fellow fellow former marine came to support me and this is the great thing about running and doing life coaching is he hadn't run for for years and years due to debilitating illness and I was like forget that come having not run for 15 years um and believing he couldn't we just not we banged out a 15 miler just a meter then he was just wonderful man by the way Mike hello if you're watching um and he was over the moon of you know obviously and I'm trying to nudge him to to go the plant-based route um but it was that bad we had to keep listening out for the branches cracking overhead and when you heard a crack would stop and the branch would crash down in the in in the road at Burritor in front of us we'd hop over it and then continue on with the rain was horizontal and the final again insult to injury was I ended up running along the leet at Yelverton the old Drake's Leet and quarter mile from the end it was seven o'clock on the morning of the 27th so it had taken me I think about five days to to um to do I stepped in a cow pat or a horse pat and instinctively I went I lift I just lifted my foot as if you'd stopped in dog muck you know in dog muck or something and that motion after five days of running was it 60 miles a day tore my calf I could literally felt it snap the muscle snapping and I was so I was so resigned to the pain by that I just ignore I just kept running but yes I I do wonder what's next to 300 miler I mean a 200 mile and made me struggle so the professionals would do that in in a day and a half took me five days yeah yeah yeah those ultra runners are quite phenomenal I did a I didn't do anything that far but I did a couple of hundred mile races and uh yeah I was like 20 hours behind the behind the winner I was like how can they be that far ahead you know I feel like I've been doing my best how can they that far ahead they've been to bed they've had they've been had food been to bed got up had breakfast and I'm still out here running and can we promote your the the way of the runner dot com yeah so the way the runner dot com is is my running camps most of which are in Dartmoor or or in South Devon anyway I do a writing and running weekend with the author Richard Asquith and me so he wrote a brilliant book called Feeding the Clouds about I've read it yes about the trail running up up north what do you what do you call it the trail running that fell running soccer yeah yeah so yeah so me me and him do a writing and running weekend then we do a couple of running camps uh in in Dartmoor and I also have a podcast as well called the way of the runner the way of the runner podcast so interview all sorts of people on there so I get to be on the other side of the screen yes can I come on as a guest I'd love to chat to you about right about yeah running running we could just we use this one we could like yes and so what is it that you know why do people love running why will people come to a ride a running on writers count what what is it about this sport that that it really gets some of us that we're never going to give it up and you know until we're they're going to have to put us in the ground first yeah I mean I guess you get that real feeling of sense of well being after you run don't you I mean I always think when I'm not sure I want to go for a run I just remind myself how good I feel afterwards and you just you know you and often during the run as well but it's weird before the run it's just like oh you know it takes effort it takes energy like oh do I really want to do this once you get going once again to your stride I think it's a really natural thing you know running is a really we are as that book born to run goes on we are we are built as humans we're not really built to cycle or even we can swim but it's not our specialty but running is one of the things we're really good at I mean in the animal kingdom we're not that good at sprinting compared to all the four legged animals but actually in long distance running we're one of the best species on the planet so I think we it just feels like we're doing something we were designed to do and then the running camps I guess a lot of people you know maybe they live in a house where no one else runs and they don't have many of running friends so it's really nice to spend a whole weekend with other people who really appreciate running and you just talk running you just go for runs together everyone everyone gets you you know we get each other so so that's fun but yeah I think it's just it's a real human primal human thing to do is to run and I think we like that yes brilliant well um I have to say this has probably been one of the most enjoyable podcasts I've done I think I think I've got 200 was it 400 videos I think now on um wow on some of them are clips but but uh yeah you can see that I I think I'll always love this sport yeah and to speak to an absolute legend um and someone who's I mean you must get a lot of praise for your writing I mean I get it from my sort of books but it it's I mean I owe you a debt of gratitude and we've only just met today so yes thank you oh that's okay not at all yeah I mean people it seems to strike a chord with you I think people know that why they love running but they find it difficult sometimes to put it into words so when they read something that kind of expresses what they're feeling I guess it it it strikes a chord so people will enjoy it yeah a down and thank you ever so much um I hope we can chat at some point again in in in the future thank you Chris been been very enjoyable what I'll do I'll put you I can put your social media links below the video should anybody want to follow you or getting contact the um the actual website links we've just come up with a major problem on the podcast all right as we speak I've just been banned from YouTube for seven days okay because because one of my guest's websites their security certificate folded right um and as such YouTube come and blame me for it I promise I'm not trying to scam or fish fish anyone I believe the expression is but they look at it as like you could be a scammer right so um so I'll I'll um I'll maybe write the name of your website as opposed to put it as a url if if you don't mind yeah of course yeah um this is the problem is is the guest's website might all be all secure now but we know where it's going to be in a year's time and of course you've only got to get three strikes within um I think a three month period and that's it that that's your livelihood gone so anyway sorry waffling on there but massive massive thank you again that's all right good to talk and I'll yeah I'll promote it and stuff once you uh promote but once you publish it let me know the links and all that stuff thank you very much just just um stay stay on the line of Darren and well I say goodbye to our wonderful subscribers massive love to you all please look after yourselves I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did if you could like and subscribe that will help us to get you uh many more wonderful podcasts and we'll see you next time


So I'm learning how to use a wheelchair for the very first time in my life, which might be surprising considering that I had my leg checked off, but the entire time I went through surgical recovery I never used a chair. I used crutches or something else. And I remember when I was adjusting to my prosthetic leg the overwhelming feeling for like six months of exhaustion, helplessness, and frustration because every single thing was different. From getting up in the morning to like getting a drink of water to realizing I forgot a pen that I needed to write with on the other side of the room. And it was so mentally and physically overwhelming. And I've been using this chair for a couple days now inside. And man, it's the same thing. Like I just feel all of this tension building up because I'm so frustrated because I'm not used to this. But man, this is going to be a learning experience. I look forward to when I am not constantly frustrated and a little bit angry. But that day is not today.


Hello everyone and welcome to the arcade game for Jurassic Park! This came out in 1994 if you could believe and it is bloody loud! So this is technically the first proper continuation on from Jurassic Park. A few months later, that's right, not only are we returning to the island, but we're returning actually again! I love that! We're returning as friggin Ellie Sattler and Alan Grunt. Why are we returning? Lord knows! Okay, are you ready guys? I'm excited. I've never actually played this. I've seen it plenty of times and actually in Japan because there's a lot of retro arcades, I've seen it before. I have not had the pleasure- oh no we don't want to spoil it! Unfortunately I haven't had the pleasure to play it in arcade form yet, but you know, we're gonna play it here! I'm just gonna give myself loads of credits. Oh, I can really give myself nine. Fantastic. Okay, let's go. Oh god. Oh, this is- is there a way to make this less sensitive? Oh, that's more sensitive. Okay, this could be- oh here we go, Jurassic Park! Area one! Let's go. Oh, we have a helpline on this one. That's the difference. There's no- oh god, okay! We have an amazing- oh god, a lot of bullets. There we go. Shoot at the he- well it's hard to miss, let's be honest!  Oh, I'm actually already taking damage. Oh, that's interesting. Oh, okay.  Never mind! She's come back for another session! Whoo! Oh wait, what was that? Oh, are we in a cave? I don't know if I'm doing good or not. I feel like I am. Oh, there we go. There we go. Where are we now? Oh, should I- I should probably be shooting these, right? Oh, Jesus! No! Yeah, did I get it? I don't even know if I got it. Okay. Ah, the classic.  Yeah- Ah, no! The slashing raptors! They're all coming out! The giant piles of well- questionable material. Oh, are we done? Oh, I should probably shoot that, shouldn't I? Oh, yeah. Oh, here we are! It's the Mud Range of Hawaii! Jesus! That's a lot of galabimus. Shoot her! Oh, I'm so sorry. Wow, this is just- we've come back to ease the new blood. Not to save the dinosaurs, like Fallen Kingdom or- or Dominion of Legion, believe. Oh, okay. We- we've come to exterminate them all. No, don't stop shooting. Don't- oh, there's so many! Triceratops eye! Jesus! Wait, have I already lost a life? Oh, no, I used one tonight. Okay. Oh, we're doing good here. Maybe I'm, like, a pro at light gun games. I don't know. Ah! Oh, I like this. I like that the, um... Oh, they're dodgy. They're dodgy. I like that we have a- we rock back when we were hit there. That's cool. This came in May-May, but- Jesus! All right, didn't expect that. This is one crazy-ass jeep. It's holding up to Triceratops as we're ramming them. Okay, so the grey ones take multiple hits. I think the brown ones are super easy to kill. Okay, well, yeah. May- oh, there we go. There we go. They can't swim. They're all deed. Ah! Where are we now? Keep out. Oh, this seems good. Oh, God. I don't like that there's lots of health kits.  Oh, they've got range. That's a lot of dilapid sources! Oh, no! Danger! Yeah, you're telling me. Oh! Bad dilapid sources! No! Wow! Oh, well, there we go. That's- that's only one life done so far. It's still only a one! How many dinosaurs have we massacred? Oh, I love the little cheeky. Giddy-ho! I want to ride with you! Oh, we're at a bridge? What's this? What's the- oh, oh, no. Oh, it says take a photo! Oh, we have to shoot the side. Shoot the side! They're deadly!  Oh! Ah! Oh, many! Okay, so you've just got to shoot them when they're in the sky. Oh, gotcha. Oh, that's cool. I have a perspective on it. Yes! Obviously, this is not a patch on the Lost World Arcade. Although, it's fun in its own- how many? Oh, my God! Am I even killing any of them? Oh, no. This is not good. This is not good. Oh, just- oh! Oh, what? Okay, and the- oh, oh, oh. Oh, I've been knocked off. I'm- where the- I've clipped to the ground. I'm in the back rooms. Oh, God. No, there's a block of salt. Jesus. And kylosaurs. Oh, and kylosaurs! That's cool, though. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, yep, yep. Now, now we're getting tough. Oh, and we were just at another jeep. Oh, is that- is that the last people who decided to come here? Jesus. Oh, we need to shoot them. There we go. That's way better. Now we're in a cave! Let's keep going! Woo! Oh, Jesus. Okay, that's loud. Yep, there we go. Sorry, kylosaur. I don't even know if I need to hit you. Oh, my good, my good goodness. Right, I think I got the health kit. Oh, I really don't know how much that- that really has helped me. There are so many. Just keep shooting. That's all we do. How many bullets do we bring to Jesus? He's a newborn. No, no, no. Physi- That's it. So what was cool about this one is that you would sit on a- on a bench. Oh, no. Oh, the brachystacosauruses! Yeah, you would sit on a bench or like a- like a car seat and it would rock back when you hit the- the dinosaurs. Ah, come on! I hit it for ages! Whereas I don't think the Lost World had anything like that. Oh, they made the noise. That was cute. Oh, my- Oh, just- just shoot them. Shoot them? Are they peaceful sauropods, yes?  Also, yes. Keep out. Oh, that's a good- What are we doing here? Can we- can we- Like, assess this? Jesus! This sauropod- What has Henry Wu been doing? How many legs does it have? Yeah, you do great on only fans. Ah! Oh, my God! And it really took that comment- oh, they got- What, the leg is thick as a tree trunk. Oh, should we shoot its head? I don't know. Oh, we did it! Wow, thank God that brachystacosaur was there. Or else we would have been done. Oh, ichthyosauruses!  Kill the wildlife! I don't- oh, God. Okay, it's the brachystacosaurs we need to worry about. They're just having a great time. Oh, you know what we've seen? Quite a few species of like, dinosaur here. Wow! There's nothing you can do with these brachystosaurs, man. Some of them are just going to hit you. Oh, actually, that one. Help, help, help, help, help! Oh, wow, I got like, nothing. I hit four of them. Keep out.  How many barriers do we need to make here? What was Jurassic Park's idea? What's Jurassic Park's idea? When the more barriers, the better. Where are we even heading to? We're just on like a cliff? What is this island? This need to be retcon collin? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Not the raptor- oh! Oh, we're heading towards raptors, are we? You bread raptors! Oh, yeah, look at me go. Look at me go. Oh, there we go. We just took a shortcut. Don't know where. Still don't have any idea what we're doing. Don't sneeze on me. I knew you were going to do it. Oh, wait, what happened? Hello? Oh, wow, that was a stock sound effect if I've ever heard one. Ah! All right. Oh, now I can actually kill.  Okay, okay. Oh, my God, it's jittering about. Oh, it's just falling over. Oh, she's turned red. She's got an angry. What was I supposed to do there? You just.. you just take damage. Right? Yeah, like literally you just take damage. There's nothing you can do! The engine is so weird, though. Bye, God Rexie! What have they been doing to you? Since I've left the island! Like what? How many shots? Hey, there we go. We was just doing that. Maybe it's doing a wee glitch. I don't know. Oh, the legs falling apart.  John Hammond. It was always the flea circus. She never existed. Oh, there we go. Oh! Oh! Oh! Shoot her! Oh, well. There we go.  Oh, raptors. This is good. Is that a cane? What the hell's on the floor? Is that what we're doing? They didn't send a bomb. They actually just sent us to wipe out the dinosaur population. Aha! Be on the left side now, watch. Oh no, it was alright. Left. Right again. Go on. Go on. I've worn him dead. I'm going to the left side. I knew it. There we go. Where are we? Oh, God. This is about to get tough. Oh, Jesus. They're all in the middle. Oh! Hello! Oh, like over in a volcano. We're in friggin' Mount Sybo. I bet it wasn't even called that at the time. Oh, should I be shooting these? I feel like I shouldn't be shooting the bridges. The bridge needs to stay. I have a feeling. It's probably for our- Okay. It's probably for the best. Where are we in hell? There's no walls. Oh, I'll take those. Yeah, I'll take the hell. Oh, they run ahead.  Not really. Why did you- Why are you in a volcano? Why am I in a volcano? More to the point. Oh, okay. Okay. Triceratops. Oh, it's erupting now. Oh, okay. So we- Did Colin just nick this game as idea for Fallen Kingdom? Maybe. Like, what am I supposed to do? Oh, I see them in the distance. Oh, here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Oh, God, that's so hard! Yes! Ah! I have the power of a god! There it is. Oh, Trandon. Oh, wow. That took like 5,000 hits. Okay. Focus on the meteors there. This volcano's got a vendetta against me. Jesus. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Okay, okay, okay, okay. We just sw- Oh, right. Is that a new boss? A giant bulb. I mean, what can I do? I'm shooting it. I just died. Do you need two players? Oh, God. Oh, I'm gonna run out of pennies. No! Oh, there we go. Just need to hit me enough, apparently. There we go. We haven't even got to the visitor center. Oh, there they are. Hello!  I don't see how we're coming back from this. I think this is the end, guys.  Oh, so the gold ones take a couple of hits. Oh, oh, oh my, oh my, where are we? Why are we got standing tides? I mean, mides. Okay. I have no idea. Are we in the underworld? Are we in the river Styx? What is this? Who came up with this? Are we gonna have mosasaws? That'd be cool. Zemosasaurus level 10. I missed all the health kits.  But come on. I mean, look what I'm doing with you. Jesus. This is one hell of a ride. I want to play all the other Jurassic Park things on the arcade shooters, but they haven't been emulated or anything. And unless I pull... Oh, there's a visitor center. Wow. Didn't realize you were right outside hell. Oh, there we go. Oh, somebody made the skeletons again. And they just made two T-Rexes this time. That sells. Okay. Okay. I don't know why we're going slowly here. Okay. Are we going to go to the kitchen? Oh, can we do the chief of the kitchen? That'd be amazing. What are we going on? Hey. Oh, okay. Okay. So what was going on here? Were we caging up all the dinosaurs? Are we trying to save them? Get some. I mean, this is the age of games where you didn't need a plot, right? Whoa. Took off like a rocket. Oh, lovely. Oh, they're blowing the informed explorers. This place will never be the same again. I just released it, then killed it. I know danger. What about this trip has not been danger? Let's be honest here. Release the galanitis. I don't think they're really going for me. I think some are. Okay, we've got one credit left. Just kidding. Yeah, I've got that, baby. Oh, well, this is nice. Although the music's telling me that I should. Oh my God, flying T-Rex limbs. Oh, no, there's the rest of it. Oh, wait, there's two.  Oh, that was nice of you. Which one's going to... Oh my God. Okay, go for that one. Oh, I probably should have kept shooting that. Oh, okay. Yeah, my bad. Should have kept shooting you. I know all they're switching. Have I just been going for the yellow one? Or can I pick and choose? Oh my God, a double-edged attack. I didn't even let Colin change it. They're like, you know what? Oh, I got it. Okay, all right, all right, all right. I mean, I don't know what else to do here. But I just keep shooting. Haven't I had enough? Like, what did I do to you? You know, to cause this? Oh, you're just going to go for me, aren't you? You're like, ah, you didn't say the magic. Oh, hello. Oh, okay. That wasn't me. I went, oh. Where are we? Who am I? I'm a murderer is what I am. Like, you just always want to click the button, don't you? Keep out. I mean, this is where we're going, right? We were going. Oh, this is it. The final showdown. And there's no escape. And there we go. That would have been all like nine credits gone. I would have made the end of the game. I'm assuming always going to come from. Oh, you're gonna go. Oh, final charge. Okay, okay. I mean, I am shooting you. There we go. There we go. Slowly drain, slowly drain the health bar. Oh, and your health bar is not moving anymore. Why can I shoot you now? Yeah, there we go. There we go. Come on. Jesus, that last health bar, T-Rex.   Don't hit me again.  Oh, I think you're dead. It looked like you just sort of collapsed into the ground. She's going into the back rooms. Oh, there we go. Oh, they're not dead. We did it, guys. We shot her full of, I don't know what those were. Happy bullets. Oh, it's all a happy ending. There we go. All's well that ends well. The end. And there was never any sequels made for Jurassic Park. Oh, wow. You know, when I was thinking about making my Jurassic Park month, like the third and final time, the one that never happened, this was on it. But of course, things happened. I moved and then the movie was COVID and then the movie was pushed back. And in the end, I was like, I'll just play it when I want to. Oh my God, that's nightmare fuel.  Oh, that's better. Lovely to laugh as well. You know what? I would have been pretty happy with that. It was before my time though. My time was the Lost World cabinet. You know, I was what, three or four when this came out, probably three. But Lost World came out when I was there. You know, I was cognitive. I had thought presented by Sega. God love that from the Sega. Love it. Love it. Love it. Well, that was loads of fun. Well, you want me to do it again? Hell no. If you enjoyed this video guys, check out my other arcade tuners. We did Ocean Hunter not too long ago.  I did the Lost World. Loads of fun. You'll find links. I don't know. Just type it. You'll find it. Game Beaver. Those arcades. Anyway, if you enjoyed this video guys, leave a like. And until next time, I'll see you guys later. Oh buh-bye.


What's up folks? I'm Danny O'Brien. I'm the International Director here at the Electronic Frontier Foundation And we just got hold of an iPhone X and I don't know whether you watch many of these unboxing videos on YouTube But there's usually I know about 20 minutes at the beginning where they don't actually like Unbox it they look like they're gonna unbox it, but they don't actually unbox it They just fill it with like stuff and so I thought well Why don't I waste my time more productively and spend this bit of time before I unbox this Answering questions that have sort of gone an electronic frontier foundation Ben and I'll do that simultaneously or or near simultaneously with Unboxing this but by this point most of you will probably be kind of fast-forwarding and skipping to try and get to the bit Where I actually open the box so what I'm gonna do now is I'm just gonna look like I'm just gonna focus on this And it looks like I'm about to unbox it and then people have been fast-forwarding and skipping we'll see this and Stop and and I'll be able to talk to them. Great. You're back Well the first question we get here at the electronic frontier foundation when we start showing off our iPhone products Is they go? Don't you guys like hate this sort of stuff aren't you like kind of like open source Linuxy fanatics Well, the answer to that is no Technically we're free software fanatics. Good. Oh, yes. I'm sorry GNU free software fanatics. Thanks, Richard for emailing in and But that's that's also not true. In fact, we like all software hardware all new technology That's why we have joined here as activists technologists and lawyers and our main interest in this is protecting your right to use the technology that you want and Protect your ability to sort of transform that Use it the way you want maybe adapt it learn from it and tell other people about it That's what we're here And it's sort of in the spirit of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak like hacking on things and and taking a look at stuff Let me tell you about how we actually got this so about a couple of weeks ago We knew that Apple was getting sort of small supplies of these these devices But they they went very quickly so what we did Was we wrote a script the script actually automatically goes to the Apple Store website it types in my zip code and then it sort of presses the button automatically and then looks for the phrase unavailable in any local stores and if it doesn't see that message It it sends me a message going. Oh my god. There might be iPhones go crazy and it worked very well And what we learned from that is at six o'clock in the morning Every day our local here in San Francisco Apple Store gets like maybe two or something like that iPhone 10s and have I been calling it X all this time okay 10s and and What I did is I set an alarm on my generic Android and woke up at six o'clock and like went down and picked this up now a lot of companies actually get really mad at this kind of use of their websites and They they try and take people to court and actually argue in US courts that it should be a criminal offense to Basically click on a website funny in this way and so that means that potentially people who are just exploring the web or playing around with software like this could get arrested and And and and the companies would like them to be thrown in jail. So that's what why we at the electronic frontier foundation Use our lawyers to defend people like that and we also try and change the law to make it clearer That actually people should have the right to explore and code and innovate themselves So if you want to help us with that we're trying to change the computer fraud and abuse act And I imagine there's probably a link flying around that will show you how to do that Okay, so we've probably lost everybody who's fast-forwarding to the unboxing now. So I'm gonna do some more. Oh, oh, it's so Apple made in California. Oh, oh, I bet it makes a clicking noise when I you know actually can I In this isn't very EFFE, but can I just like take a small moment to vent a little bit? So if can we look at this? So if you see here, this says 941 and then and then a date Of the reason is is because when Steve Jobs first announced the iPhone It was at 930 41 on on September the 12th 2007 because this is the 10th anniversary So that's great. You know how to do that. But now look at this, right? So it's 941 But it says it's Tuesday September the 12th 2007 it wasn't a Tuesday To all any 17 it was a Tuesday. This is the 10th anniversary iPhone. So it was Launched on that debt, but I mean it wasn't launched at 9 o'clock Like everybody knows that it was launched at like 11 o'clock. They did a different time. So this should say 11 41 Tuesday September that and I've already written a letter But on the EFF head did no paper about this But that's the sort of thing that you know if Steve Jobs was alive, right? He'd be like he'd probably be like kicking someone right now So so another question that we often get here at the EFF isn't usually about the day What it's about is that if I'm dissing Steve Jobs or Apple or Criticizing people like can they sue me for copyright or trademark abuse or something like that because I've put it in the title of my YouTube video What's a really interesting question? I'm not a lawyer I just hang out with a lot of lawyers and this is not legal advice and I am not your lawyer and this is not an attorney client privileged YouTube video Unboxing but what I can tell you is that there is this right called nominative fair use nominative use in in US law and What that means is is that if you want to call an iPhone and iPhone when you're criticizing it as long as it doesn't sound like Apple you're like trying to imply that Apple sponsored it, which you may have noticed Apple did not sponsor this Or like you're connected in some way Then you you have that that ability and that was decided in court actually it was a 1992 case I think called new kids on the block versus America news on news America Apparently the big problem back in the 90s was that people were talking about new kids on the block too much rather than the Moment and and that established for everybody else that they were allowed to say new kids on the block or Apple online and you couldn't get sued just for for doing that And so that's a that's an interesting story And it also establishes one of the other things we do here at EFF Which is we try and establish new precedents when copyright or trademark law might like encroach on people's abilities to speak freely on On YouTube or any other vehicle we send in lawyers and we try and argue why it's important Okay, so that was probably a lot of conversation So what I'm going to do is I'm actually going you can stop fast-forwarding I'm actually going to open this so I'm more if you want to like okay Are we already because we can't like shoot this anymore? Okay? So the other thing that we kind of been getting a lot of questions. Oh look it does make a little clicking noise I'm actually getting kind of excited here. So there we go. It's now less shiny in the right studio lights I'm going to open up. It is in fact designed by Apple in California by artisans movie stars surfers tech bros and What we've got here and probably gonna break that so the other question that we get you get the little ear things But you still have to plug them in right should I trust touch ID are these things good for my digital security and We like to say It depends Because we spend a lot of time actually trying to protect people are pretty vulnerable from targeting from everybody from the NSA to to you know stalkers or harassers or petty criminals and The protection that something like face ID gives you Really depends on who your attacker who your target or is and if you're worried about that kind of thing You should go to our website Security surveillance self-defense ssd.eff.org and we sort of walk through this in a little bit more detail That's mostly a sort of tech Issue, but the other part of it is actually the law can interface with that too. I should touch it It's so magical and intuitive so the The way the law interacts with this is kind of interesting in the face ID and touch ID Replace passcodes and actually in US laws. There's a sort of stronger protections Against the government or law enforcement demanding that you hand over your passcode as opposed to demanding that you put your finger on your phone or That they can stick the They can stick the camera in your face and get it to unlock and that's actually because the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in the fifth amendment it there's a explicit prohibit prohibition against Self-incrimination and the courts are much more comfortable about the idea of self-incrimination being something about saying something that's in your head and revealing it then they really are about It just mysteriously turned on that's really creepy then then handing over your fingerprints or Or Taking a look at your face So that's another area that we'd love to keep pushing at the law to make sure that the legal protections around face ID and touch ID Just as strong as giving up your passphrase or passcode okay, so there's some other stuff that's kind of interesting in this which is that Apple have actually done a couple of other subtler things here to protect your security and a sort of legal framing One of them is that if you press this I believe it's this side button.  The other thing that Apple has done In this case is there's a lot of facial recognition knowledge that the device has on you, but it's all kept Locally, so it's not uploaded into the cloud It's not even uploaded into Apple servers and that's great because the amount of legal protection That you have against the government or hackers or anyone coming in or Apple even coming in and misusing that data It's much better if it's on your device because you own that device you have legal protections about that device and And you can see what's what's going on One of the issues here, of course though is you kind of have to trust Apple on that, right? They say they're not uploading that data, but because this is a proprietary Closed technology we don't actually have any insight and we don't know whether that's the case So and I think it's fair to say that Apple would be in a lot of trouble if it turned out that they were Handing the stator over to the US or other governments, but with the Snowden revelations, you know There's often sometimes there are things going on that we don't know about You may notice that I'm I'm actually a Brit and one of the things here at EFF that we're particularly worried about right now is a British law called the Investigatory Powers Act and That passed last year and what it gives the UK government the ability to do is to go to a company like Apple and Demand that they change the technology re-engineer What they're doing and also there's a gag order attached to that so they can go you need to change this You need to create a backdoor for us to be able to pull this data out or undo the encryption And you can't tell anyone that you change that and that's something that's going to really undermine the trust between Individuals and big companies like this and it means that that really in these situations where you've given these companies a lot of potential power Just based on on them keeping these secret secrets That could be all destroyed and undone by by law and by government and what we're worried about as we've seen this happen in the UK and The UK's obviously going to go after a lot of these big international companies We know that they're already putting a lot of pressure on what's app Facebook to change their systems and countries like Australia And and even the United States are looking to adopt that sort of model So if you see headlines in the next few weeks or months that make a big to-do about how Apple isn't Co-operating with the US government or the Australian government. That's what they're trying to do They're trying to set the environment so they can create secret gag orders that will allow them to re-engineer this to maybe hand over this data So we're obviously kind of fighting that kind of thing And if you want to know more about that you can go to our website and learn a little bit more about our battle including lawsuits and including Speaking to judges and advising people and creating stronger laws with our lawyers technologists and Activists, okay, I can't believe I spoke this long without touching my my iPhone So I think we're gonna do some subtler investigative work On the product maybe Involving downloading some games checking out their terms of service make sure that they're they're truly Privacy protected. Thank you very much. Oh, it's ringing. That's kind of weird That's that is actually weird because I haven't put a I haven't put a sim card in there. Huh, okay I'm actually just gonna put that on voicemail for a moment I bet I we should probably go but um In the meantime go to our website if you enjoy the rights You have on the internet and you would like to protect them and support us You can also join your local digital rights group. We have the electronic frontier Alliance lots of really great organizations around the United States and there are digital rights groups probably in your country as well and I should get this so New phone who this