The United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) has been in the news quite a bit over the past year.  What most don't understand is that USADA also has a full educational outreach effort to work to decrease doping in sports.  We are pleased to have Dr. Judy Sandlin in the podcast today who works extensively with USADA's educational efforts.

We are pleased to have Dr. George Cunningham from here at Texas A&M join us in the podcast to discuss the issues surrounding sports and sexual identity.  One of the lightning rods in modern society is anything to do with sexual identity.  The world of Sports and sports medicine is not exempt from discussion, conversation, and research into the role that sexual identity plays in Sports.

You've been waiting for it and here it is:  the 100th Podcast from the Huffines Institute for Sports Medicine and Human Performance!  We do all things 100 today:  We talk to Mr. Mike Dillingham - Aggie Class '35 who is 100 and is the oldest living Aggie - about his time on the Texas A&M baseball team from 1931-1935.  We welcome back to the podcast one of the world's elite ultramarathoners Dr. Mike Sandlin who runs (and wins) 100-mile foot-races for fun! (really).

Every so often, there is a great book that comes along that reveals a bit more about why we play and have sports in our society.  Such is the case with a new book - The Ball - that was recently released.  Dr. John Fox is the author and we are pleased to have him with us in the podcast to talk about his book and the topics he covers within.  This is a great book and we highly recommend not only the podcast, but also the book!

We are especially pleased to welcome Dr. Claude Bouchard from the Pennington Biomedical Research Center with us today in the podcast.  Dr. Bouchard is one of the most prominent Exercise Physiologists in the world with over 1000 scientific publications - and an h-factor over 90 (which is a measure of scientific impact - 90 is an amazing score!).  Dr. Bouchard has been forerunner in working to discover the genetic regulation of both obesity and exercise capacity.

We are pleased to have Bryan Minniti, the Asst. GM of the 2012 MLB National League East Champions Washington Nationals on the podcast today.  We talked to Bryan back in March 2012 and were pleased to be able to catch up with him on the last day of the 2012 baseball season.  We cover quite a few topics, including the somewhat controversial decision by the Nationals to shut-down their star pitcher before the season was completed.

This is the audio-only podcast of the 2012 Huffines Discussion Talks.   This week's 2012 Huffines Discussion Scholar is Dr. Dennis Bramble from the University of Utah.  Dr. Bramble has done incredible work teasing apart how humans came to be able to run long distances and why that trait was advantageous for the survival of our species.  This is a great podcast as Dr. Bramble talks about  "Can Grandma Run? An Evolutionary Perspective on Human Exercise, Aging and Endurance Performance&quo...

Today's podcast is the last of our Olympic themed podcasts and comes only a couple of days after the 100m Olympic final was run in London.  This event as well as our last couple of podcasts bring a question about what happens when we reach the limit of human performance - what happens when we can't set anymore records?  Today is a special podcast with another speculative piece from Ian Creasey that considers just that point.

Today's podcast is the third of our Olympic themed podcasts.  One of the great Exercise Physiologists joins us today - Dr. Ed Coyle from the University of Texas.  Dr. Coyle is with us in advance of the London Olympic Marathon to talk about whether a human will ever run a sub-2 hour marathon.  Dr. Coyle also talks about his past work with Lance Armstrong measuring his exercise capacities.  This is a fun conversation with one of the best physiologists of our time.

Today's podcast is the second of our Olympic themed podcasts.  We are pleased to have award-winning sports journalist Christie Ashwanden join us today to talk about the London Olympics and sports doping.  Christie has written stories that have appeared in most of the major magazines and newspapers in the United States and she has a great perspective on the big topics in sports medicine today.  This is a great conversation with one of the best young writers in the United States!