Stronger: The Untold Story of Muscle, Strength, and Human Potential | Michael Joseph Gross

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (0:00)
You've been told to walk more, to lose weight, to focus on cardio. But here's what you likely haven't been told. Muscle is one of the most under-appreciated systems in the body, and the consequences of ignoring it are showing up everywhere. Muscle supports your brain, helps regulate blood sugar, and plays a critical role in whether you remain physically independent as you age. My guest today is Michael Joseph Gross, author of Stronger, The Untold Story of Muscle in Our Lives. He spent years exploring how muscle has shaped culture, health, and identity, and why it deserves a prominent place at the table in healthcare. Keep watching if you want to not only add years to your life, but more importantly, add life and strength to your years. Michael Joseph Gross, welcome to the show.

**Michael Joseph Gross** (0:58)
Thank you, Gabrielle.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:00)
I have to say that you have written my new favorite book. And I was thrilled when you agreed to come on the show. This book is called Stronger and it is The Untold Story of Muscle in Our Lives.

**Michael Joseph Gross** (1:14)
Thank you so much for having me.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:15)
This book does something that I've never seen. It brings history, the history of muscle, the history of movement, and it integrates science. Really well done.

**Michael Joseph Gross** (1:26)
Thank you.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:29)
Tell me about why. Why this book?

**Michael Joseph Gross** (1:32)
Think back to when we were in grade school. It starts really early how we get our ideas about muscle. There are bigger kids and smaller kids. There are bullies and weaklings. There are jocks and eggheads. And we all just kind of take that as a given about life. But if you went back to ancient Greece, if you could talk to the poet who wrote Homer's epics, The Odyssey and the Iliad, and you asked him what was more important, mind or body, they wouldn't even understand the question. They didn't even have words that would tell the difference between mind and body.
The choice to see ourselves as split down the middle is that it comes from a history of choices that people have been making for thousands of years. And those choices in many ways focused on muscle. In ancient Rome, doctors and trainers had a big fight over who would corner the market in what we now call health care. And the doctors who won that fight won it in large part by putting down athletes who trained to build mass, to build muscle. There was one Galen of Pergamon, and he said that athletes who trained to build mass were incapable of rational thought. He said that they actually smothered their souls with the slime of this muscle, right? And that kind of marked muscle as a locus of anxiety and marked it as something, there was something wrong about building muscle that has, in a way that has lasted right up until today. So I had an experience when I turned 40 of starting to train in a more serious way than I ever had before, and it really changed me, and I was fascinated by that. I wondered why I didn't know more about muscle, and I went looking for a big book that could kind of help me understand muscle in all the ways that you just mentioned. I couldn't find it, so I had to write it.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (4:00)
And to be fair, you are an acclaimed journalist and author. You have been contributing editor at Vanity Fair. You have contributed to the New York Times, GQ, The List Goes On. You've been a very curious person, which is evident in this book. After you had this moment of understanding, we had really missed the mark on skeletal muscle, how did you decide about the sections in this book? As you began to formulate, there's three big characters. There is this story that becomes interwoven. How did you begin to break that down and think about it?

**Michael Joseph Gross** (4:39)
Most books about muscle tell you what to do. And this one's different because it's descriptive, it's not prescriptive. So I knew from the beginning that my way into talking about muscle was going to be through individuals, really fascinating people. I knew that one of them had to be a doctor. I knew that one of them had to be an ancient, a scholar of ancient Greece in some way, because we get so many of our ideas about athletics and medicine from there. And I knew that at least one of them had to be a really high level athlete. And so I found, I found these people. It took a long time hunting for them, but it's just kind of like casting. And you find the right balance of characters, and then you let them, let them start playing on the page.