Chapter 1: Who is Dr. Reza Adib and what are the charges against him?
A listener production. Hi, Natasha Belling with you and welcome to the afternoon edition of The Briefing. Coming up in our deep dive, back in the 1990s, a US scientist made a crazy prediction that a human could run a marathon in less than two hours.
Well, last weekend, one runner did, and today we're talking to that scientist about the decades-long quest to break a human limitation and also what records may be broken next. But first, let's check the afternoon headlines this Friday 1 May. The long-term partner of former Queensland Premier Anastasia Palaszczuk has been released on bail after being charged with three counts of rape.
Dr Reza Adib, who is a Brisbane surgeon, has also been charged with one count of sexual assault and two counts of deprivation of liberty. The charges come just a day after police raided his Gold Coast apartment. It's alleged the offences occurred on 30 March. He is set to appear in court on 14 May.
Chapter 2: What events led to the calls for calm in the Northern Territory?
Local authorities and Indigenous leaders are appealing for calm after last night's riots in Alice Springs. Hundreds took to the streets and clashed with police just hours after the body of missing five-year-old Kumunjaya little baby was found.
The riots occurred outside Alice Springs Hospital where Jefferson Lewis, who has been arrested, accused of allegedly abducting and murdering the little girl, was being treated after he was beaten by locals before police arrived. It's understood the 47-year-old has now been moved to Darwin.
Today we heard from police and local Indigenous elders who urge calm to allow for the family of the child to grieve. Here is Michael Little from the Alice Springs Town Council.
When we woke up this morning, it looked like a cyclone had gone through the place. But what it was, was people not thinking about consequences anymore. from their choices that they made. And somehow we need to let the family mourn, not create more sadness and angst in our minds and our souls.
Chapter 3: What updates are there on the situation with Iran and Donald Trump's involvement?
The family of Kumanjai Little Baby has also released a statement saying, quote, it is now time for sorry business to show respect for our family and have space for grieving and remembering. Catherine Little, the CEO of child advocacy agency Snake, says that once the grieving period has passed, some serious conversations and structural reforms need to occur.
We are going to have to have some really tough conversations about what what led to this moment in time and how we respond to this moment in time. We know that there needs to be a really good hard look at custodial policies.
We know that that's going to need to happen because we have to start asking ourselves really tough questions about how a known violent offender was released from an area 500 kilometres away and turned up in Alice Springs.
Overseas now in the U.S. is weeks into an uneasy stalemate with Iran, with both countries blockading shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Now there are reports out of the U.S. that Donald Trump has been briefed on new plans to hit Iran with, quote, short and powerful strikes.
Chapter 4: How have house prices in Sydney and Melbourne changed recently?
So far, the White House hasn't confirmed any of those reports about the potential for more strikes. But Iran has released a statement saying that any violence from the US would be met with, quote, long and painful strikes on US positions in the region.
Meantime, the Secretary-General of the United Nations has warned the ongoing blockade of the Strait of Hormuz would cause long-term suffering in the world, saying the longer this vital artery is choked, the harder it will be to reverse the damage. The former soulmate of Jeffrey Epstein says the financier and pedophile left a suicide note during an unsuccessful attempt at killing himself.
That note has been sealed by a federal court in the States and the New York Times is petitioning for that note to be unsealed. The soulmate claims he discovered the note in July 2019 after Epstein made his first suicide attempt in jail. Epstein died in the jail only weeks later. New data has revealed house prices have started to fall in both Sydney and Melbourne.
Looking at the difference between March and April, Sydney and Melbourne both saw property prices fall by 0.6 of a percent. While house prices are up overall across the country over the past 12 months, the recent downtick in prices in two of our biggest capital cities does reflect on the RBA's increase in the official cash rate,
Chapter 5: What significant achievement did Sabastian Sawe accomplish at the London Marathon?
which makes taking on a mortgage more expensive. At least one economist also says that ongoing uncertainty over the war in Iran would put a brake on house price growth. And Australia's most trusted brands have been revealed in a new survey. The Reader's Digest list shows the top five brands are Dettol at number one, followed by Panadol, Toyota, Bunnings and Dulux.
The survey's been running for 27 years and Dettol was also the winner last year. There was also a special category for the most iconic brand and that went to sausage sizzle central itself, Bunnings. Now it's time to get into our deep dive with US physiologist Dr Michael Joyner on the quest to break the two-hour marathon and how history was made last weekend. Mike, thanks so much for joining us.
We saw history unfold over the weekend regarding this Kenyan superstar breaking the two-hour barrier. How incredible was that feat?
Chapter 6: How did Dr. Michael Joyner predict the sub-2 hour marathon would be broken?
Well, it was certainly something that had been a long time coming, and we knew that it was sort of physiologically possible when the great Eliot Kivchoge ran 15940 in a special exhibition that was set up in the fall of 2019. And he had come pretty close in May of
of 2017 so people knew it was uh possible perhaps the times had been drifting down and getting faster and faster in real races as opposed to the exhibitions kipchoge ran so for somebody like me who'd been following it for a long time it was a matter of when not if
And in regards to the actual record, so it was on Sunday, London time, and the 31-year-old beat the marathon world record by a whopping 65 seconds. How incredible is that? That 65 seconds is a huge time.
It is, but people have taken bites out of the marathon world record similar to that a number of times. You know, I think Derek Clayton, when he was the first person, the Australian Derek Clayton, when he was one of the first people to break 210, I think his fastest time took a pretty big bite out of the marathon when he went 208.33, I think, in comparison to what other runners had done.
And so I think there have been pretty big bites over the years.
And you actually wrote a fantastic paper almost 30 years ago, from what I understand, saying that this barrier could be broken.
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Chapter 7: What role does modern technology play in marathon running?
Explain that for us.
So the idea was, in the 1970s and 1980s, ideas about... the physiology of endurance sports, and especially distance running, and to some extent cycling, really came into focus. There started to be really good data on a number of elite athletes at the time, like Derek Clayton, for example. And we knew
what their maximal oxygen consumption is, or VO2 max, which is sort of the upper limit of aerobic function, we began to understand something called the lactate threshold, which is the percent of their VO2 max that they can sustain for a couple of hours. And then the question is, is how much speed could they generate? Some people are more efficient than other people.
And so I simply said, if the same athlete... had the best value ever reported for all three of those variables, how fast would they go, and came up with a time in the high 158s if that happened.
Chapter 8: What insights does Dr. Joyner provide about the mental barriers in marathon running?
I pointed out that this model was based on lab data. Who knows what happened in the real world? Who knows what would happen to some of these variables over a couple of hours of running? Who knows how they'd be affected by the heat and things like that? But at least it seemed like it was in the ballpark.
And in regards to how things have changed over the decades, you mentioned before, you know, you wrote this article more than 30 years ago. Yeah. To what degree do you believe modern technology, especially with exercise equipment and shoes, like the shoes today are next level.
To what degree do you think this equipment has helped break down those barriers and people being able to achieve those world records?
Well, I think you have to say it was a number of things that happened. The first thing that happened is the marathon used to be for people who were not quite fast enough to set world records or get Olympic medals in the 5,000 and the 10,000 meters. But as it became more and more popular and the world marathon majors emerged and the amateur system of the old days went away,
there became big-time prize money in these big marathons. So the fastest runners began to run the marathon. So the people with the absolute most ability, and they weren't waiting for the end of their career, Tarsh. So I think the first thing is you had the absolute best distance runners attempting the races much earlier in their career and really focusing on the marathon.
Then what happened is, you know, we got things like pacemaking. The courses began to get faster or people started to think, what should a course look like to go fast? And there became other, again, incentive financial and other incentives. So I think all of that came into play and the record came down quite a bit prior to the super shoes. And then the shoes have made a difference.
We did a study on how much of a difference the shoes make. made at least the earlier version or the earliest versions of the shoes suggested was somewhere on the order of about 1%. Now, lab data showed it could have been 2% or 3% or 4%, but we think the real-world data said it was more like 1%. So in this case, that'd be, you know, 1.2 minutes in a two-hour race.
So I think the shoes have made a difference, but I think the ā Biggest thing is that the very best runners have started to run. It became kind of a thing they pursued. And the incentive system was set up to encourage it. So you had the right athletes on the right course on the right days. And then the final piece of the puzzle was better equipment.
So for the future, if we can possibly predict what may happen next, this incredible record was broken. So what do you think the future actually holds? Because in the middle of all of this, we actually saw robots running a marathon and they were able to beat the human record. So what do you think the future may hold for marathons, Mike?
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