Why fascists love “fitness”

Fitness and political ideology

0:00You're listening to Code Switch from NPR. I'm Gene Demby. You know how when you work out and then you hop in a coldish shower, but then you get out of the shower, but you're still mad hot, you're still kind of sweaty. That's what was going on with our guest, who hops on the call and he's apologizing for being sweaty. I don't know if it's because it's like 120 degrees here in Los Angeles, you know, shout out to El Nino, or because I just don't have the same like cardiovascular capabilities, but I see my heart rate spike. He hoops. Like he just came back from the courts.

0:34I absolutely despise running. Like I just, I hate it. I'm talking to Hassan Piker, political commentator, the internet's self-proclaimed himbo, and current fixation of the chattering classes. I'm a little bit of a rabble rouser. But Hassan sweating after a workout is apropos because his being a gym bro is kind of the whole reason we wanted to holler at him. Like what are your splits? Are you doing like upper, lower, push, pull?

1:05Yeah, so my splits are, I do upper body push, upper body pull, lower body push and pull usually. I try to hit like all three of the major compounds once a week, at least once a week.

The right wing fitness pipeline

1:20And we're talking to him because we wanted to know, is our concept of fitness like inherently fascist? Just stay with me for a second, y'all. So if you spend enough time in online fitness spaces, you might notice that there's kind of a pipeline into right-wing ideology. Like sometimes those influencers themselves will just casually espouse skepticism around vaccines or transphobia or fatphobia.

1:50I fell asleep once to tips on working out in my apartment, you know, during the pandemic. And woke up 45 minutes later with YouTube auto-playing a video of Jordan Peterson decrying wokeness. And IRL, it is pretty unremarkable to go into like a bodybuilding gym or CrossFit box and see thin blue line flags all over the walls. One of our NPR play cousins, Odette Youssef, she covers extremism, was recently telling me about these fitness groups called active clubs.

2:20The Anti-Defamation League believes there are active clubs in at least 30 states. They're decentralized and they vary in size. And increasingly, they're networked and coordinating mobilizations. And in them, young men get together to work out, but the people who organize these active clubs do so explicitly to red-pill those young men and pull them more formally into white nationalism. So, okay, is there something about fitness in particular that makes it this gateway to right-wing fascist thinking?

2:56We wanted to ask Hassan this because lefty politics, working out, that's all kind of his ministry, right? The number one most common thing I hear is, oh, I was a right-winger before I encountered your content, right? But the second most common thing that I hear is usually, I lost a lot of weight because you got me in the gym. And that is the goal. A few years ago, media types started calling Hassan Piker the Joe Rogan of the left because he's a loud socialist who somehow grabbed the ears of a whole lot of straight young men in his hours-long streaming sessions.

3:30Pundits of all stripes speculated that his looks and fitness had something to do with his appeal. I mean, he's 6'4", he's swole. The New York Times called him a progressive mind in a MAGA body. The Republicans even threw up this shirtless photo of him in his drawers at their big rally before the midterms. My meat pick is now history. Which he got a kick out of. I feel like if your goal is to present me as, like, radical jihadist, then showing a sexy photo of me pretty much naked is probably not the way to go about doing that.

4:06But, um, having said that, I, uh, you know, I, this is, I worked hard. I worked hard at it. So, I'm glad that, uh, the, the gay staffers at the RNC were also paying attention and chose to use that photo. But being swole is, like, it's part of your brand now, right? Yeah. I'm sure that, uh, people would perceive me very differently if I was a schlub, like a balding guy who's, who's really fat. I mean, there is this, like, outright hatred of, of fat people that, uh, you know, I personally experienced and also, of course, notice all the time.

4:44I don't think it's, like, the entire package, but yes, I do think about that a lot. I, I, it's, it's a part of it. Hassan has become an unofficial poster boy for the Swole-a-Tariot, this loose collection of leftist gym rats, right? These are people who want to raise class consciousness among gym goers and also want to reclaim gym spaces and gym culture for the left to keep those spaces from being sweaty breeding grounds for fascism. They wear shirts that read things like, a fascist worked out today.

5:15Did you? So, okay, how did we end up bringing all this weight into the gym? Oh, my God, sorry. Yeah, tomato, tomato, tomato. You know, I know, I, I'm by your scorn, but when did working out get to be so politically coded? And is it inherently fascist? Hassan doesn't think so. I think right-wing ideals are very easy to fall into. If you don't think about things too much, the, the idea of, like, body fascism and, and eugenics, I know that this is, there are people far, far more intelligent than myself who have thought about,

5:56this concept, this concept extensively. I just, maybe I'm a little bit of a dumb guy, but I, I don't really see it that way. Okay.

Defining fascism and fitness

6:04Can we first think together about the relationship between fascism and fitness? Okay. My name is Ava Perkis. I'm an historian and a professor of women's and gender studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Did you say and historian? Yes. And I saw you, like, trying to struggle with, like, N the other day. Yes, I'm an historian. So, so proper. Okay. And let's think about big F and small F fascism.

6:35Fascism. Okay. Okay. So fascism is about the consolidation of state power and state authority and coercion and the minimizing of democracy. And when the state or a powerful institution or a powerful person is pushing fitness, it can seem harmless, it can seem anodyne, it can seem maybe even, like, a positive good. So I'm going to give some examples.

7:08So fitness has been and continues to be used to determine who is hardworking and who is lazy, who has self-restraint and who is greedy and insatiable, who can contribute to national progress through sacrifice of their body, and who takes from the nation by getting fat off of the government. So when we can use fitness as a proxy to do that sort of separation, it can be a tool of soft fascism, maybe even actual fascism.

7:49And so, y'all, that's what we are getting into today, because it can seem like gym culture only recently became this hotbed of fascism and politics in general. But our guests today say that gyms and exercise, even the very idea of fitness itself, has always played a big role in how we determine who does and who does not get to be a citizen with rights.

8:20All right, all right, all right, all right.

Historical roots of American fitness

8:30So before you start wondering whether we're saying your Bowflex is a government psyop, let's just back up a taste. Because to even begin to understand our current culture of fitness, we kind of got to look back at how we even got here. We have an oppressive historical relationship to fitness. That's Ava Perkis again. She wrote a book called Fit Citizens, A History of Black Women's Exercise, From Post-Reconstruction to Post-War America. When anyone who is a member of the state, who represents the state, who has some sort of large influence or power is using fitness, we have to think about how fitness can be a shorthand or a subtext or a strategy to dehumanize people, debase people, divide them, and like I said, put them into some sort of hierarchy, right?

9:25For sure. So in the 19th century, fitness was less about your physicality and more about like your moral character and your goodness. So when someone was called fit or referred to as fit, it meant that they were dignified, respectable, had healthy habits. They were home-loving and virtuous and hardworking. So it was about morals, not muscles. I love that.

9:55Morals, not muscles. Exactly. So when did that change, though? Like when? I'm so excited that you asked that question. So after World War I, so World War I is 1914 to 1918, fitness began to refer to someone's physicality. So fitness can mean someone who exercised and exercised intentionally and not through their labor, which was a very important distinction. So it was a class thing. Oh, it was a class thing and a response to industrialization, right?

10:27Because we're leaving agrarian society behind. We now have these desk jobs that make us soft. You have to go out and pursue exercise at the gym. You have to seek it purposefully. So if you got fit through your working on the farm or from your working at the factory, that didn't really count. Right? So it had to be exertion as leisure, basically. You couldn't be doing it to keep a roof over your head. It had to be something you were doing in your spare time. Purposeful, intentional exertion, right?

11:00Capitalism going to do it every time, won't it? Won't it? Won't it do it? So fitness was someone who exercised intentionally, someone who was disease-free, free of pneumonia and tuberculosis and syphilis and typhoid fever and these infectious diseases that predominated in the early 20th century. Someone who was, like, conscious of their health actually thought about it as a category to which people and Americans should aspire. And someone who could serve in the military. But who was, like, who was helping shift that definition?

11:32Was it the evil capitalists? Like, was it evil industrialists who were making this sort of shift? Oh, my gosh. A lot of it came from the state. State leaders, military leaders. Because, again, World War I changed a lot in this country and in other countries, too. Like, we needed something specific to request or require in order for people to serve in national defense. And fitness became a way to sort of signal this is what it means to be able to serve state and national projects.

12:04This relationship between fitness and national identity is not uniquely American. But, yo. Nothing is more American than the ideal of the self-fashioned individual, right? Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, being successful by dint of your own labors. That's the historian Natalia Melman Petruzella. Natalia wrote a book called Fit Nation, The Gains and Pains of America's Exercise Obsession. There is nothing, and I actually think it's true, there is nothing like exercise and working on your body that shows that individual labor more reliably in the world.

12:42Like, you know, it's true. If you go to the gym every single day, your body probably will change. And that's mostly because of your own efforts. Natalia says that by the 1930s, the idea of fitness and serving your country were purposely braided together. Like, under FDR's New Deal, the Civilian Conservation Corps was created to get young men out into the woods, working with natural resources to build infrastructure for the United States. And the ads for the CCC were explicit about how they wanted their men to look.

13:17It looks like a Chippendales. Like, it's these shirtless guys with, like, these axes, and they're, like, out in the woods working hard for their country. And there are two things that are going on there. One is that being active and getting strong is a form of being a good citizen, right? And so there's that. And then the other piece, and there were all these promotional comics that they had, they would show these, like, skinny guys who were at home, and then they sign up for the CCC. And then they come back, and, like, their family's like, we don't even recognize you.

13:48You put on, like, 50 pounds of muscle. And there's this idea then that the kind of, you know, what Charles Atlas called the 97-pound weakling can actually build himself up. And not for just narcissistic reasons or not even just for frivolous reasons like having fun playing sports, but through national service. I mean, y'all, this is literally the plot of Captain America, like, the scrawny dude who gets yoked with the help of some, like, nuclear-grade steroids, specifically to serve the nation.

14:20It's not at all subtle about the political coding, right? FDR, I know his critics from the right called him a fascist and a totalitarian, but that's not what we think of when we think of fascism. And I think kind of one of the reasons that this topic interests me for so long is that, like, the political dimensions of fitness culture are really, really elastic. So if you jump to the 50s and the 60s, American presidents picked up this mantle of maintaining America's fitness. There are proposals for exercise programs in schools with the idea that America's young men need to be prepared to scrap, to go to war.

14:55President John F. Kennedy took that issue on personally. And, like, there's this article that he writes right before he comes into office in Sports Illustrated. It's called The Soft American. And he really makes this case really, really strongly that Americans are getting soft. And that reflects a kind of flabbiness of intellect and civic and moral purpose. And if Americans want to be good Americans, fitness is super, super important. Oh, wow. A California high school has the well-nighed perfect answer to the president's call for physical fitness.

15:27However, some of the big resistance, like, in the administration to actually putting this into schools is, like, are you kidding me? This is what fascists do. Like, have the government tell you to exercise? Like, we are Americans. We do what we want. We're individualistic. Fascist regimes, whether it's the Nazi regime or the totalitarian communist regimes, one way that they exert total control and conformity over a population is through these physical practices.

16:03And so if you look at, like, the videos of, like, the Hitler youth or in communist totalitarian societies, like, having these group demonstrations of physical prowess and of kind of, like, collective exercise was definitely part of that. And he really has to fight that. And I think that you cannot underestimate how much that shapes the way fitness culture has evolved since that.

Race and selective citizenship

16:26But all this propagandizing about the great American citizen with, you know, all these muscles and all this vigor, they obviously wasn't talking about people who weren't white, though. This idea about fitness, physical fitness, and all it accomplished, and citizenship is not a loose sort of idea. It's very tightly connected. That's Eva again. And she and I talked about the way Black folks thought about this idea of fitness as a credential to be a citizen, since, you know, Black folks' citizenship in this country has historically been very conditional.

17:03So, if you really are interested in race and fitness, a historical source to look at is the birth control review. So, the birth control, I know. I was like, wait, what? I know. Where are you going, Doc? Just stay with me, all right? Just stay with me, Jean. Okay, so the birth control review was the official outlet of the American Birth Control League, which was a pro-contraception, pro-voluntary motherhood organization that also had eugenicist leanings.

17:43Margaret Sanger was very much involved, which she's the progenitor of Planned Parenthood, all of this, right? And I came across this article that I want to read to you. So, this is like your average Joe. This is 1917. It's during World War I. And this gentleman is advocating for selected citizenship. Selected citizenship. So, he writes, Most of our young men are unfit for military service. The young men accepted by the National Guard prove to be not qualified for the Army.

18:18Ten percent of the young athletic enthusiasts who go to Plattsburgh are reported to have fainted on a hot day's hike. Our men are too soft for vigorous fatherhood. How many young women are fit for motherhood? We limit immigrants, we hold them up at the nation's portals and inquire into their pedigree, their health, their sanity. Why do we not get to choose our natives? Right? So, this idea of fitness is very much connected to who should be born and invited to the seat of American citizenship and who should not.

18:57Wow. I mean, it feels a little on the nose to this moment. It's so on the nose. Oh, my God. It's so on the nose. I do think about Pete Hegseth here and what he said recently. We are no longer the woke department or the weak department. He gathered a bunch of military officers. He invited the press to lay out his vision for the armed forces. And he said the U.S. military would have no fatties.

19:32No fatties. No, he's a transphobic epithet. No beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors. Mm-hmm. The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in with testosterone testing on top. It's, like, very explicit. It's very top line. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You ain't got to dig that deep. And, you know, I want us to think about this history with some complexity, right? Because in my research, I show that African Americans, and particularly Black women, have a really complicated relationship to this idea of fitness and citizenship.

20:10And they do employ some eugenicist kinds of thinking as it pertains to racial uplift strategies and citizenship seeking. So, it's like the bougies are basically saying to other Black folks, because y'all are not together physically, morally, all those things, then maybe you should not procreate. I see an argument you might hear, you actually can still hear in a lot of Black spaces today, right? Jean, can you please let me read just one more primary source that I think is going to blow your mind, okay?

20:44It is from W.B. Du Bois, which I am loathe to read, because I have a large crush on W.B. Du Bois, okay? Oh, no. But he held some really problematic views before he turned to pan-Africanism, right? Absolutely. So, he also writes for the Birth Control Review in 1938, right? So, 1938, this is when Nazi Germany— This is late in the game, relatively, yeah. Yes, and this is when Nazi Germany is raging. This is right before World War II. And he writes, quote,

21:15It sounds very much like these shiftless Negroes are— Yes, they're out here breeding. They're not thinking about their marriage pairings, their mating practices. They're not thinking about the kinds of progeny that they are producing.

21:49And they are very unfit, and they are risking our citizenship in this country. Hmm. Okay, so, if we go back to this period between World War I, World War II, when everybody was like, you need to be fit as part of this American project, what did fitness, like, aspiring to fitness even look like? Like, if you were exercising in 1938, or like, just any time in the first 40 years of the 20th century in the United States, what did that even look like?

Class and barriers to health

22:18Yeah, that's a great question. And it looked similar—well, I can't say it looked similar to what we're doing now, but it meant actually going to a gym. Like, going to the Y—and they were segregated at this time. Of course. But it meant going to your YWCA to do calisthenics, jumping jacks, push-ups, things like that. But I also want to say, as classist and oppressive as this sounds, this advice and this enthusiasm for exercise in African-American life is also about trying to save Black people's lives.

22:59Black people were dying of tuberculosis and pneumonia at very high disproportionate rates. And they would say, listen, please go outside and exercise so that you can get fresh air and that you can help your lung capacity so that we don't die from tuberculosis. So it is all—does that make sense? Because it was all sort of wrapped up in, yes, a very middle-class aesthetic project, but also deep, deep worry and concern about the survivability of the Black race.

23:30You—this is going to sound weird, but I feel like you hear that same kind of intermingled messaging in the way today that, like, Black run groups talk about these things, right? Like, very much talk about why these are social spaces, but it's also, like, they will also rattle off the whole litany of bad health outcomes that Black folks have. Yeah, yeah. And so we have to do this in order to, like, uplift the Black folks broadly. And I never know how I felt about that.

24:01Something about it always struck me as really classist. Can I ask you, Jean, when you hear those messages, what is the—what is the source of your disquiet, your hesitation? Like, why do you have that reaction? They're trying to save—they're trying to save our lives. How can you be resistant to that? When I started running, I didn't start being able to run until I was, like, in a neighborhood where there were spaces to run.

24:32I remember, like, I grew up in South Philly. I tried to run in my neighborhood, Washington Avenue. But it was all just, like, factories, and the streets were messed up. Like, I didn't have running shoes. You know what I mean? Like, all those things, those barriers to entry, right? And I didn't know what I was doing. I was a teenager. But when I started running in earnest in my 20s, I was, like, in a neighborhood that I was close to Prospect Park. I had, like— Yeah. I had the means to—there was a running store in between my house and the park. Like, if I needed new sneakers, I could go get sneakers. I could get fitted for new sneakers. It was this whole process. There's all these barriers to entry to things, like, oh, you want to be fit?

25:05Go run. You want to be strong? Go to the gym. Running is, like, maybe one of the most democratic, you know, small-D democratic ways you can be active. And there's a barrier to entry to running. You have to live in a place where there's, like, the physical infrastructure to do it, where the streets are safe. Yeah. Because, you know, it's different. I would also add that being able to run or being able to walk is very much based on ability, too. Ability, absolutely. Right? And it makes sense that it would sort of activate some discomfort.

25:39And I think in the context that we're talking about Black people in class in general, it's like, I do think there's a lot of times when middle-class Black people are sort of making pronouncements about what Black folks need, or aspirational Black folks in particular, are saying, like, this is what we need as a people. It's always, it's like, just be more like us. Just be more, comport yourself in a more middle-class way. And it's like, I actually don't have those things. I can't just, like, pretend to be a Huxtable. I don't have any of the things that allow you to be a Huxtable, exactly. Yes. The accoutrements. Yeah. Yeah.

26:09I agree. So class is really complicated when you're talking about Black people. Yes, it is. Because class is not just about your relationship to the means of production for Black people. Class is also about aspiration. And so it's about how you carry yourself, what your values are, how you raise your children. Do you hang out on your stoop, right? Do you go to the juke joint? That's also about class as well, right?

26:42So, you know, you had sort of aspiring class, middle class Black people who very much espouse this idea that we need to exercise. We need to aspire toward fitness because it's good for racial uplift. It's actually good in terms of its health benefits. It will allow us to survive all of this violence that we are experiencing. And it will allow us to demonstrate our fitness for citizenship. So if we are in shape, if we are like, and as you said, also a solid moral character, we will prove ourselves to be like upright citizens and worthy of all the protections that come with being an American citizen.

27:24So going back to what you said about like the way that we think about fitness, the way it's conceived as like a thing you did outside of work in your leisure time, right? Like you think about, I don't know, like the Central American day laborers at the Home Depot who are like to do their jobs, you have to be incredibly strong, right? You have to be in a crazy shape to do it. Yes. But I don't think people think of them as like sort of like paragons or even just like examples of really fit people.

27:54Jean, exactly. And I would be remiss to not say that in the era of slavery, one of the biggest sort of lies about African-Americans, Black people who were enslaved is that they were lazy. I want you to imagine a planter, a slaveholder is writing in his diary, these people are lazy and they are working from sun up to sun down. They're lazy. And that is a trope we still live with today that began at that time as they were tirelessly laboring.

The endless pursuit of being fit

28:38All right, y'all, cards on the table. I am a gym rat. It's been such an ingrained part of my life for so long that I don't even really think about it anymore, right? But when we were talking, Ava Perkis asked me a real straightforward question. How would I define fitness? And like, I have anything close to a coherent answer, which is wild, right? Like, I've spent decades of my life, God knows how much money at this point, running and lifting and overcoming and working my way back from injuries, trying to be fit or to get to some ideal fit version of myself, which I don't think I will ever get to.

29:22I don't even think I've thought through what would be on the other side of that thing if I got there, you know, it's just this moving target in my head. And I think a lot of people who are gym rats feel this way. Like, look at Hasan, right? Like, he is tall. He is confident. He's yoked. He is somebody, to me, who is pretty objectively a fit person. But he feels like he is not where he wants to be. My physical fitness is always top of mind. I always have that hunger in the back of my mind.

29:53I always want to improve myself. It's constantly eating away in my mind that I'm not doing enough. Like, I'll tell you right now, every time I play basketball, I'm checking my heart rate religiously. And as of late, I think it's like zone four, if I'm not mistaken. Like, that's, yeah. So that's unacceptable. Like, and I'm, you know, right now, even when we're having this conversation or even when I'm in the shower, and perhaps for the rest of the day, that's going to be eating away at the back of my mind.

30:24Like, how do I fix that? How do I get my cardio up? I was a deeply insecure person. I had, you know, I still have body dysmorphia. I'm pretty open about my insecurities as well. Obviously, it's much easier for me to be confident, certainly, at this point in my life, especially. I mean, I'm successful. I'm six foot four. Having said that, confidence is something that you develop internally. And my journey to developing confidence actually came from my fitness journey.

30:54There was this goal I wanted to attain my entire life. I always wanted to, you know, be healthy. I wanted to have a six-pack. In fact, it'll come across as funny, this admission, for many people, because they're like, what? That's your goal? That's what you really wanted to accomplish? Like, that's such a silly goal. But for me, young boy growing up in Turkey, very fat. My whole family is obese. I just, I tried so hard. And it was such a massive weight on my shoulders all the time. So the way that I was able to achieve that was through consistency, to have this, like, work ethic, this rigid work structure that I existed in and still exist in.

31:31I now know that as long as I work hard, I can achieve anything. So I talked to Hassan because he works out, obviously. But Natalia is a high rocks coach. She was actually doing her ninth high rocks the day after we talked. Ava is a back squat girl. She loves strength training. These people are not just studying this. This is a big part of their lives. They live it. And all of us, including me, too, are kind of working through this relationship we have with our bodies and in the gym, I guess, and the worth we place on the effort we put into our bodies.

32:07I think one of the reasons that fitness endures is such a central part of American life and things that, like, make people think you're a good person if you run marathons or you go to the gym every day. You're disciplined and you're virtuous. Or they'll just see you. And if you look like you have visible musculature, it's like, oh, that person, like, they're disciplined. I, like, want to be like that. Now, that's because we like bodies that show work, right? We like to see somebody who's, like, working on themselves. And so I think that we gravitate towards these stories of, like, meritocracy and, you know, good things, whether it's a fit body or some accolade.

32:44And fitness really shows that. Americans love hard work. We love stories about being self-made. And even though people do it all the time in every realm of life, the idea of a shortcut, especially if it's a shortcut to something that usually we assume takes work, that doesn't sit well. It says a lot about our values. When I first asked Natalia about fitness and fascism, she said there were two ways to think about it. Okay, so there's the big systemic ways that our bodies are useful to the state.

33:18But then there's the more personal, intimate ways that these ideas can creep in, what she calls body fascism. Which is the idea that, like, the fitness industry and fitness culture actually serves to kind of impose these impossible body standards on people that elevates and kind of, like, lionizes people who have very particular bodies and determines that the other people are kind of useless. We display and we cultivate and we value our fittest citizens.

33:49And then what happens by implication or explicitly? Well, it's this very eugenic project, right? That the people who are weak or disabled or can't cut it, they are seen as expendable. But wanting to be fit and not even really being able to identify what that might even mean leaves this huge open space that makes us really suggestible and vulnerable to all kinds of ideas and ideologies. Like, when a trainer or spin instructor is yelling at you, what is your why?

34:22They are shouting into that space. And if I'm really honest, like, I worry that if I peel back all the layers of why I work out, like, what I find there might be kind of ugly. I would argue that fitness cannot be embodied because it is so theoretical and immaterial and elusive. It's like, you're saying it's necessarily abstract. Well, I wouldn't call it abstract. I would call it conceptual. I think about this all the time.

34:53I'm like, who actually can embody full and unadulterated fitness? And if we think that certain segments, migrant workers, people who are picked up at the Home Depot, if they can't embody or be perceived or be invited to the table of fitness, then should those people be aspiring toward it? Huh. Huh. Like, so you're saying, if that is not a goal that is actually attainable, then why even endeavor, you know what I mean, to try to attain it?

35:30It's, I think it's an important question. And I am not saying that people shouldn't. Right. I'm not. And I actually think aspiration is like a very important affect and ideal to study when it comes to marginalized people and people of color. I think aspiration is something we need to take very seriously. But I don't know if adopting the framework of fitness is liberatory for certain segments of the population.

Reimagining the ideal of fitness

36:04Something I've been thinking about is what would it mean as a thought experiment to push fitness aside as an ideal because the history is so oppressive. Right. And we can't disentangle those moral judgments from fitness because history won't allow us to. Right. So what would it mean to, as a thought experiment, just marginalize that idea and think about how these behaviors that have been associated with fitness make us feel?

36:43I saw you pumping some serious iron on the Internet the other day. I'm so sorry to say this. I feel bad seeing you pump all that iron, Gene. And you were so proud.

36:58It was heavy. It looked heavy. Oh, my gosh. It was really impressive. Yeah. And that, y'all, is our show. You can follow us on Instagram at NPR Code Switch, all one word. This episode was produced by Christina Kala with help from Kayla Lattimore. It was edited by Jasmine Romero with help from Courtney Stein. And our engineer was Jimmy Keelan. And we would be remiss if we didn't shout out the rest of the Code Switch Massive, right? That's Xavier Lopez and Jess Kung and Leah Dinella and Dahlia Mortada and B.A. Parker and Barton Girdwood and Yolanda Sanguini and Maya Dangerfield.

37:34As for me, I'm Gene Demby. Be easy, y'all.