The Trailhead

Sam Robinson writes the Substack Footnotes, works as a content designer at YouTube, and has a PhD in seventeenth-century science, religion, and philosophy, which makes him exactly the right person to ask why we're all trying so hard to optimize a sport whose whole appeal is that it's beautifully pointless. Zoë and Brendan get into the tension with him: distance running rewards incremental gains and deferred gratification, and it's also the least efficient way imaginable to get from point A back to point A. Sam talks about racing above Stinson Beach with his head down, missing the view; about eating a protein bar in the shower at 4:58 a.m. to make a 7:30 meeting; and about how a three-year-old and a torn meniscus have both forced a slower relationship with the sport.

The back half turns to Sam's piece on the fragility of type two fun and the male friendship crisis, what happens to shoulder-to-shoulder friendships when the run club scatters and the knee gives out, and whether shared mileage alone can hold a community together. Along the way: Robert Caro, Oliver Burkeman, Benjamin Franklin prosecuting his breakfast, and the unsettling possibility that morning-routine influencers have never actually seen American Psycho.

Read Sam at footnotes.substack.com. This episode is brought to you by Running Warehouse - join our club here.