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Undisciplined: Stretching Our Lives

Airman 1st Class Valentina Lopez

We all know that exercise is good for us — that’s sort of a given. But have you ever thought about whether one sort of exercise is better than others? Is cycling better than golf? Is golf better than baseball? Is running really the gold-standard for exercise that everyone thinks it is? Demographic sociologist Connor Sheehan thinks he’s got the answers — and they might surprise you.

He’s joining us on the line today from Tempe, Arizona, where he isa researcher in the School of Social and Family Dynamics and an affiliate of the Global Sports Institute at Arizona State University. He first joined us about a year and a half ago to talk about the health disparities stemming from sleep. Now he’s out with his latest study, which examines whether 15 different kinds of exercise have unique benefits when it comes to longevity.

Matthew LaPlante has reported on ritual infanticide in Northern Africa, insurgent warfare in the Middle East, the legacy of genocide in Southeast Asia, and gang violence in Central America. But a few years back, something occurred to him: Maybe the news doesn't have to be so brutally depressing all the time. These days, he balances his continuing work on more heartbreaking subjects with his work on UnDisciplined — Utah Public Radio's weekly program on science and discovery.