Jenny Valentish - New book: Everything Harder Than Everyone Else: Why some of us push our bodies to extremes. Exploring the fine line between hedonism & endurance.

<div>Jenny Valentish has been devoted to dancing around the void for many decades, first in the pub and then the boxing ring as a kickboxer. Jenny is the author of the acclaimed Woman of Substance: A Journey into Addiction and Treatment and her new book, Everything Harder Than Everyone Else: Why Some of Us Push Our Bodies to Extremes.</div> <div> </div> <div>About the book: There is a part of human nature compelled to test our own limits. But what happens when this part comes to define us? </div> <div> </div> <div>When journalist Jenny Valentish wrote Woman of Substances, a book about addiction, she noticed that people who treated drug-taking like an Olympic sport would often hurl themselves into a pursuit like marathon running upon giving up. </div> <div> </div> <div>What stayed constant was the need to push their boundaries. Everything Harder Than Everyone Else follows people doing the things that most couldn’t, wouldn’t or shouldn’t. By delving into their extreme behaviour, theres a lot that us mere mortals can learn about the human condition. </div> <div> </div> <div>The athlete using childhood adversity as grist for the mill. The wrestler turning restlessness into curated ultraviolence. The bare-knuckle boxer whose gnarliest opponent is her ego. The dancer who could not separate her identity from her practice until at deaths door. The bodybuilder exacting order on a life that was once chaotic. And the porn star-turned-fighter for whom sex and violence are two sides of the same coin. </div> <div> </div> <div>Their insights lead Jenny on a compulsive, sometimes reckless journey of immersion journalism.</div> <div> </div> <div>* CONTENT WARNING - Drugs, Sex, Self Harm, Cutting Weight, Eating Disorders, Obsession, Suffering, Addiction.</div> <div> </div> <div>New episodes of the Tough Girl Podcast go live every Tuesday and Thursday at 7am UK time - Make sure you hit the subscribe button so you don’t miss out. </div> <div> </div> <div>The Tough Girl Podcast is sponsorship and ad free thanks to the monthly financi