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Dr Rangan ChatterjeeWhy Walking Is The Superpower You Didn’t Know You Had with Professor Shane O’Mara | FBLM Podcast
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Chapter summaries
Walking as Our Overlooked Superpower
Shane O'Mara explains why a neuroscientist wrote a book on walking and describes his own lifelong love of it. He says he typically walks 15,000 to 17,000 steps on a good day.
- •Walking is a human capacity that has been overlooked
- •The science of walking has come together over the past 10 to 15 years
- •O'Mara loved roaming the countryside as a child
- •He does about 7,000 steps by midday and 15,000 to 17,000 on a good day
Are We Walking Enough? Environments That Work Against Us
O'Mara argues that people don't walk enough because modern environments make the easy option the default. Smartphone data shows how few steps countries average, and the hosts compare the problem to food environments, stairs and lifts.
- •Smartphone data puts Japan at about 5,000 steps a day, the UK and US around 4,000, and Saudi Arabia around 3,000
- •An average toddler walks about 2,300 steps an hour and falls roughly 17 times
- •Food and movement environments both default to ease
- •Lifts and escalators beat stairs by default, so blaming individuals is the wrong place to look
- •Design should be centered on pedestrians, not treated as the last step in the chain
Why We Stand Up: The Evolution of Walking
Asked why humans bother to leave all fours, O'Mara describes the efficiency of human bipedal walking compared with chimp knuckle-walking. He explains how it enabled foraging, carrying, cooking and the long walk out of Africa.
- •Human walking is extremely efficient calorie for calorie compared with chimpanzees
- •Walking freed the hands to carry weapons and jointly carry prey
- •Long daily walking distances let humans migrate out of Africa about 120,000 years ago
- •Humans uniquely swallow and carry food while walking
- •Walking people attune to one another, for example by turning their heads together
Walking Versus Running and Injury Risk
The conversation compares walking with running as the defining human trait. O'Mara says running is limited by terrain and by injury risk, while walking's injury rate stays roughly flat.
- •Persistence hunting relies on humans sweating to cool down
- •Humans can walk at high speed for very long periods rather than sprint
- •Running is hard in forests, rocky terrain and mud
- •Injury rate rises per million steps run but stays roughly flat per million steps walked
- •Walking is presented as a low-risk, high-benefit activity
Designing Walkable Cities: The EASE Charter
The conversation turns to car-centered design, especially in America, and to what makes a city walkable. O'Mara presents his EASE mnemonic and argues that streets should be destinations rather than thoroughfares.
- •Walkable US cities such as New York, Boston and San Francisco contrast with car-bound places like Atlanta
- •EASE stands for easy, accessible, safe and enjoyable
- •Streets as destinations are economically richer than streets as thoroughfares
- •Pedestrianized streets such as Galway's Shop Street met resistance at first and are now loved
- •Car-free spaces like Covent Garden and old Italian towns are attractions
Social Walking, Protest Marches and the Passeggiata
Dr. Chatterjee asks why people walk together in marches, and O'Mara describes the shared effervescence of group walking and its limits as a route to change. They then discuss communal evening walks, such as the Jain community in Nairobi and the Italian passeggiata.
- •Humans gather to protest abstract structures, unlike herding animals
- •Marching can create a feeling of effervescence, but change requires follow-up action
- •Walking together in a community, as in Nairobi, builds connection
- •The passeggiata gives people companionable time to talk or stay silent
Walking, the Hippocampus and the Aging Brain
O'Mara explains that the brain is plastic like a muscle and that aerobic exercise enlarges the hippocampus. He describes a study of people in their early 70s in which regular walking improved memory and attention.
- •The hippocampus is involved in learning, memory and stress, and is badly affected by depression
- •Aerobic exercise increases hippocampal volume and raises BDNF
- •In the walking study, 72-year-olds performed like 68-year-olds
- •Sedentary controls continued to decline
- •It's never too late to benefit
Walking, Creativity and Problem Solving
The hosts discuss how walking helps writers and thinkers, and O'Mara suggests mechanisms such as flickering between brain modes and a more active brain when upright. He also describes experiments showing people generate about twice as many ideas after walking.
- •Kant, Russell and Stephen King used walking as part of their writing routines
- •Creative problem solving flickers between default mode and task-positive networks
- •Walking for 5 to 10 minutes roughly doubles idea generation
- •Older walkers generated more ideas than sedentary 20-year-olds
- •Writing down bullet points, walking, then sleeping on it is O'Mara's trick
The Predictive Brain, Movement and Sleep
O'Mara describes the brain as information-hungry and predictive, with sensory areas heightened during movement, as in a mouse or a cat. Dr. Chatterjee suggests a sedentary brain may be stuck in first gear, and both stress the importance of movement and sleep.
- •The brain predicts what will happen next rather than passively receiving input
- •Visual and auditory areas are heightened in moving animals
- •Sitting all day is tiring because the body and brain need movement
- •Walking and good sleep are the two best things for mental and physical health
- •Movement should be built into the design of work and schools
Walking, Mood, Depression and Inflammation
O'Mara says people underestimate how much a walk lifts their mood and cites an Australian study linking more walking with lower risk of major depression. He also discusses lower inflammatory markers after long walks and the inflammation theory of depression.
- •People rate their mood higher after a 20-minute walk than they predicted
- •An Australian study of about 35,000 adults found depression risk fell with more walking
- •Whether walking treats existing depression is unproven
- •Weeks of walking in nature lower inflammatory markers
- •Ed Bullmore and others propose inflammation drives some depression
Hunter-Gatherers, Energy Expenditure and Diet
O'Mara describes the Tsimane and Hadza, who have excellent heart health and burn roughly the same energy as Westerners. He argues that diet and food processing matter more than exercise for energy balance, and explains exercise-induced inactivity.
- •The average 80-year-old Tsimane has the coronary artery health of a 50-year-old American
- •Hunter-gatherers eat high-fiber, unprocessed diets and fewer calories
- •Housekeeping functions of the body use most of our daily energy
- •Fat-sugar mixtures are highly palatable and drive overeating
- •Exercise can trigger inactivity and licensing, so activity should be spread across the day
Walking's PR Problem, Robots and Public Health
The hosts ask whether walking is too simple to excite us, and O'Mara notes that walking is deceptively complex, as robots struggle to do it. He argues that walking's problem is not PR but an invisible system, and that urban design is a public health issue.
- •Humans seek novelty and status, but walking groups can leverage social motivation
- •Learning to walk takes about a year of thousands of daily steps and many falls
- •Robots on wheels are easier than robots that walk
- •Narrow footpaths and short crossing times show the system is the problem
- •Public health measures such as sewerage show how engineering the environment improves health
Tracking Steps, Headphones and Practical Tips
O'Mara explains that he tracks his steps and that people are poor at estimating their own walking. They discuss whether to wear headphones, and O'Mara closes with simple tips for adding steps.
- •Step tracking supports intuition about how you feel
- •People badly misjudge how many steps they take
- •Podcasts are fine for getting out, but silence is better for problem solving
- •Keep comfortable shoes handy and set an alarm to get up every 25 minutes
- •Park farther away, get off the train early and choose a farther lunch spot
