What are the limits to human performance? This episode is all about that. It’s not an easy question to answer. As you’ll hear, those limits are elastic – and they are about the body and the mind.

My guest is Alex Hutchinson. Alex is an award-winning journalist and author. He has a regular column in Outside magazine. His most recent book Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance is amazing. This is a book that among other things, explores the relationship between the mind and body in athletic performance. In reading it, I came away with not only a greater understanding of the research into athletic endurance, but with a far greater appreciation for the interaction between mind and body than I ever had before.

And, when we think about uncertainty, one of the biggest uncertainties we have is in knowing the limits to our physical performance as humans – and how these limits may have been set by our own minds.