Who is Hugh?
1) The Peter Attia Drive #168 w/ Hugh Jackman: Reflections on acting, identity, personal transformation, and the significance of being Wolverine 2hr 10min
2) The Run Smarter Podcast: Persistent Plantar Fasciitis Troubleshooting w/ Ian Griffiths (Part 1) 1hr 10min
3) Whoop Podcast: Olympic Rower Tom George talks high strain, red recoveries, and how he broke the elusive 5:40 mark 52min
4) Rich Roll Podcast: Mary Cain Is Fixing Female Sports 2hr 39min
5) The Peter Attia Drive #169 w/ Katherine Eban: COVID-19 Lab Leak - Examining all sides of the debate and discussing barriers to a full investigation. 1hr 39min
1) This was undoubtably one of the most unique listens I’ve had in a while. I’m still not sure what drew me to put it on but if Peter wanted to have Hugh as a guest I figured there must be a reason. They dove right past the adamantiun and $180 million career earnings to Hugh’s youth and the early days of his acting career.
I remember being shocked to see Hugh singing in Les Miserables, which made a lot more sense after I found out it was a musical, and thinking it was pretty unreal that the guy who plays a badass superhero also has wicked pipes. After listening to this pod it makes a lot more sense as he was formally trained as a stage actor and still does numerous performances each year. The more you know…
Anyways, it was a very curious discussion between the two as they probed back and forth sharing stories and memories of the past that led them both to where they are today. It was extremely introspective and raw and I thought it was unreal to listen to a well known and successful celebrity be so candid and open. I definitely have a new found respect and admiration for the greatest showman and the variable forms of performance he excels at.
The pod clicks along at an engaging but slower pace as the discussion twists and turns from topic to topic.
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2) As a physio, the discussion in this one caught me off guard and I’m all for it. They begin with a general discussion on plantar fasciopathy which was great as they worked to unpack some of the confusion around the condition the exists online. Like most physical ailments plantar fasciopathy has a high individual subject specificity with regards to how one responds to treatment so what works for one person may not work for someone else.
As Ian describes, “go for the big wins first” when selecting treatment modalities (more to come on what these are). Not that any of the common interventions are harmful, but they all have a time cost and some are less likely to make a significant change for the majority of people. These should be added in as adjuncts rather than the primary driver of rehab.
They discuss the load-capacity continuum through the coffee cup metaphor. I have done 2 instagram posts on this recently as I think the concept is great for illustrating why too much or too little load can cause pain in a structure.
“Tendons don’t like holidays and they don’t like surprises”
Now to the meat and potatoes of their discussion. This is the part that definitely challenged my current biases towards management of this condition. Ian was part of a team that worked 5 years to create a best practice guideline for the management of plantar fasciopathy. It is open access in the BJSM and the entire paper can be found here: Management of plantar heel pain: a best practice guide informed by a systematic review, expert clinical reasoning, and patient values
This guide is unique in its approach as it synthesized data from 3 branches to come up with the current recommendations; a systematic review of all high quality evidence on plantar heel pain, expert interviews on plantar heel pain, and patient interviews on what they valued most in their care.
The results were:
1st line treatment: plantar fascia stretching, plantar fascia taping, and individualized education regarding load management, pain, footwear, etc.
2nd line treatment: Shockwave therapy, custom foot orthoses> prefabricated orthoses
I was shocked when I didn’t hear loading the tissue! How it didn’t make it into either the first or second line of treatment recommendations struck me as odd. Ian cites the reasoning as only one study had looked at loading the plantar fascia and it wasn’t high enough quality to be accepted. This was the paper by Rathleff et al. You can view the abstract here.
Other treatments that were in the maybe section with strengthening included dry-needling and injections (steroid or PRP).
In my current practice I have utilized loading the fascia as a 1st line treatment and it would seem I may need to make a change to focus less on loading early on and more on the recommendations above. Like a tendon I believe the fascia ultimately needs to be loaded to stop the condition from recurring but my timing of the intervention might be off.
A lack of evidence to support something isn’t a nail in the coffin, it simply means it needs to be looked into further, but for now I will tweak my approach to the treatments most likely to make a positive impact in the short term.
I’m looking forward to listening to the discussion in part 2.
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3) I was scrolling through my ‘new episodes’ and I saw the name Tom George and started to think to myself how do I know that name? Then it dawned on me that perhaps this is the rower that went to school with my brother at Princeton. Ryan always talked about him as being a physical freak so it seemed possible.
To be blunt, I know nothing about rowing. I have been on a rowing erg machine, but that is about the extent of my experience. Based on the podcast the 5:40 mark on the erg (over 2km) sounds comparable to the 4min-mile in the 50s. An extremely rare endurance feet that only a handful of others have accomplished to this date.
So, is the Tom George who broke the 5:40 on the rowing erg, the same guy I met strolling around Princeton campus in cut off jean shorts? It certainly is. As soon as Princeton came up in the conversation I knew that I had actually met this guy. I’d give it about a 1% chance that he would know who I am but it’s cool nonetheless.
The pod is a good listen on what training looks like as part of the Great Britain National Rowing Team and how Tom manages his recovery when he’s working out daily with extremely high outputs.
If you watched rowing at the Olympics you may have caught Tom on the GB 8’s team that won bronze.
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4) Those of you who have followed my writing know that I have talked about Mary Cain in the past. If you are unfamiliar with the name, she was touted as being the fastest female in the USA and one of Nike’s prized athletes, set for Olympic glory… until she wasn’t.
She was constantly berated by her coaches about her weight (odd since she was fast AF) and pressured to find ways to drop more lbs, often in front of her Nike teammates. As her weight fell, her performance did too, until she quit the program. In late 2019 she bravely released an OpEd in the NYT which blew the doors open on what was happening behind the scenes at Nike.
This 2 and a 1/2 hour conversation breaks down the details around her experience at Nike, what has happened since her OpEd, and more importantly what is going on in her life currently. She’s up to some really cool stuff. Her current mission has been to create positive change in the running space for female athletes, which she hopes to do with her new NY-based running team and non-profit, Atalanta - named appropriately after the greek goddess who could not be beat in a foot race.
This was also a first for me as I had never listened to any of Rich Roll’s podcasts before. He was a very engaging listen and skilled host at guiding the conversation along. Mary’s name caught my attention so I thought it would be a great guest for my first listen. I will be tuning in again.
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5) In this one Peter chats with an investigative journalist who has spent months collecting and analyzing information regarding the origins of Covid-19. This topic is surely a challenging one to discuss and I thought the two of them did a great job. The conventional opinion, up until about a month ago, was that this virus was of natural origin meaning it came from an animal and made the jump to humans, perhaps through an intermediary animal along the way. (Bat->Pangolin->Human). There have been numerous scientists (not part of the msm) that have been arguing from the beginning that it’s possible this virus didn’t have a natural zoonotic origin. It took over a year for someone in the media to pick up this story and Katherine Eban was the one to do it. Peter and Katherine break down the increasing circumstantial evidence supporting the theory that this virus accidentally made its way out of the lab.
Being the professionals they are, neither have time for unbacked conspiracies. Nothing is certain as they simply lay out the evidence and let the listener absorb and analyze it for themselves.
During the conversation they take a step back in history to discuss other lab leaks and dive into the pros, cons, and ethics around gain of function research on viruses and offer their opinions on if the US should be participating in it.
This was a great discussion on what we know to be facts involving the origin of the virus, what we still don’t know, and why we likely will never have a “smoking gun.” However, as Katherine suggests “there’s a lot of smoke coming out the windows” about this investigation.
If this topic is of interest to you this pod is a must listen.
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Thanks for reading!
