by Ian Chillag

Today the esteemed Robert Krulwich shared some Merry Christmath with us: the number of good things that happen is greater than the number of bad things, so on the whole, things are looking up for us humans. A study this week in the British Medical Journal about marathons seems like a microcosm of what Mr.Krulwich talked about.

People die running marathons. It happens to good runners, it happens to bad runners. You get 40,000 people doing something that some would say humans just shouldn't be doing, and bad things sometimes happen.

But! It turns out eliminating marathons wouldn't save lives. You gotta close streets to host a marathon, which means fewer auto-related deaths, and the number of runners who die is more than offset by the number of drivers who would have. For every runner who drops dead while running a marathon, 1.8 drivers are saved. Marathons mean more net living humans.