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On this Episode of Unbound Conversations
With a rare mix of elite athletic experience and academic insight, Alex unpacks what drives high performers to grow, adapt, and keep going, especially when the path ahead isn’t clear.
Whether you’re an athlete, a leader, or standing at a personal crossroads, this conversation will hit home. We explore how to navigate transitions, rebuild identity, and find meaning in challenge. This is about more than performance… It’s about purpose, curiosity, and how to rewrite your story when it matters most.
Listen to the Episode
About the Guest
Alex Hutchinson is a Toronto-based science journalist with a big-picture focus on human performance, particularly in fitness, endurance sports, and the outdoors. He writes the long-running Sweat Science column for Outside magazine and contributes regularly to The Globe and Mail, Canadian Running, and other publications, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Popular Mechanics. His work has earned accolades such as a Lowell Thomas Award and a National Magazine Award.
His latest book, ‘The Explorer’s Gene: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map’, explores the science of exploration. He is also the author of ‘Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance’, a New York Times bestseller, and two previous books on fitness science and modern innovation.
Hutchinson holds a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Cambridge and conducted postdoctoral research in quantum computing with the U.S. National Security Agency. A former national team middle-distance runner for Canada, he still runs daily and occasionally races, though he’s happy to leave physics exams in the past.
Show Notes
- Harnessing the “Effort Paradox”
- Reinventing identity through challenge and change
- The biology driving risk and reward
- Mastering self-talk under pressure
- How superstition shapes high performance
- What drives us to explore the unknown
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