© 2021
Donate
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Our Redding transmitter is offline due to an internet outage at our Shasta Bally site. This outage also impacts our Burney and Dunsmuir translators. We are working with our provider to find a solution. We appreciate your patience during this outage.

Are Athletes Really Getting Faster, Better, Stronger?

By NPR/TED Staff
Published July 18, 2014 at 5:42 AM PDT

Part 2 of the TED Radio Hour episodeChampions.

About David Epstein's TEDTalk

Humans seem to have gotten faster, better and stronger in almost every way. Yet as sports journalist David Epstein points out, many factors are at play when we shatter athletic records.

About David Epstein

David Epstein writes about the science of sports from performance-enhancing drugs to the lucky genetics that separate the pros from the rest of us. A science writer and longtime contributor to Sports Illustrated, he's helped break stories on steroids in baseball, fraudulently marketed health remedies, and big-money irregularities in "amateur" college football.

Now Epstein is an investigative reporter at ProPublicaand the author ofThe Sports Gene, exploring the complex factors that make up a champion athlete.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

NPR/TED Staff