Michael Easter was a contributing editor at Men's Health magazine, columnist for Outside magazine, and is professor at UNLV. He also is the author of the new book "The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort To Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self" available now.

Our world has never been more convenient and comfortable. With just a few taps of our fingers, we can order food to our door, access endless entertainment options, and keep our climate at a steady 72 degrees. We don’t have to put in much effort, much less face any risk or challenge, in order to sustain our daily lives. 

Meeting up with Michael Easter for an interview requires a little trek into nature, and a bit of sand in your shoes. Climbing up rust-colored rocks under a bright blue sky peppered with pillowy clouds, Easter — a longtime health journalist and lecturer at UNLV — shared one of his favorite adventures from his new book, “The Comfort Crisis.”

If this year feels like it has flown by, there’s a solid scientific reason for that. Most of us spent it locked in our homes, doing the exact same thing day in and day out.

Today we’re talking to health & fitness journalist Michael Easter, a contributing editor at Men’s Health magazine and journalism professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Michael is one of the fitness space’s most prolific writers of in-depth profiles, covering the people, trends, and breakthroughs that keep this industry moving forward. He joins the show to talk about his unlikely road to teaching in a respected university while also balancing the challenges of his own research and writing. He’s got some of the coolest “in the trenches” stories in fitness journalism, and you definitely don’t want to miss out on what he has to say.

Albi Skenderi is sitting on a leather love seat in his studio apartment in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. A road bike leans on a wall and a punching bag hangs in a corner.

Faced with zero gravity, a young, healthy adult in space can lose up to 20 percent of their muscle mass in five to 11 days. That’s the hell that awaits U. S. Navy Lieutenant Jonny Kim, 36, who recently completed NASA’s astronaut-candidacy training for his potential first trip to space.

It was this past spring, and Jack Dorsey, the tech entrepreneur who co-founded Twitter and Square, was on biohacker Ben Greenfield’s podcast to divulge the newest tool that helped him work the long, demanding, intensely focused hours required to run not one but two billion-dollar companies.