Speaker 1: A song, a.
Speaker 2: Book, and a dish. I'm seven o two, twelve minutes
Speaker 2: to six.
Speaker 1: Normally, when we introduce our guests for the closing feature
Speaker 1: at the end of a week on seven oh two Drive,
Speaker 1: it's pretty easy to introduce them. But if I had
Speaker 1: to do this with my next guest, it really would
Speaker 1: take a while. Because he's a medical doctor, he's produced
Speaker 1: and presented on television, he's an international speaker, he's involved
Speaker 1: in the world of healthcare, and on and on it goes.
Speaker 1: I'm not even going to try. I'm just going to say,
Speaker 1: welcome to seven oh two Drive, doctor Michael Mole, thanks
Speaker 1: for your time.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, mister John Pulman. It's good to
Speaker 2: be with your the show, and thank you for the invite.
Speaker 1: So, Michael, let me ask you this. I mean, one
Speaker 1: could look at all the things you've done and someone
Speaker 1: might say, well, this guy didn't really know what he
Speaker 1: wanted to do. Another interpretation that might be you had
Speaker 1: a very good idea all through your career of the
Speaker 1: kinds of things you wanted to do. You just wanted
Speaker 1: to do them in a whole range of different ways,
Speaker 1: which is.
Speaker 2: John. I wish it was the latter the truth is
Speaker 2: the former. It's okay, just kind of was being the
Speaker 2: yes guy, like I'll take that opportunity, I'll jump at that,
Speaker 2: and yes, yes. My very first sort of screen test
Speaker 2: for top billing this I just qualified. I was a
Speaker 2: medical doctor. I was working in trauma and then I
Speaker 2: get put in front of a camera and lights and
Speaker 2: all I remember was forgetting my lines and getting stupid
Speaker 2: and you know, make me some sort of ad lib
Speaker 2: comment and thought, well, that's the first and last time
Speaker 2: I'll ever be on camera. And they came back and said, hey, man,
Speaker 2: we love that, you know, would you consider work with us?
Speaker 2: So it was that was honestly the edge on It
Speaker 2: was kind of just opportunities that always grabbed them and
Speaker 2: went with it. And yeah, I'm still trying to figure
Speaker 2: out what I should be doing with my life.
Speaker 1: So well, it's a nice position to be in in
Speaker 1: many ways if you're always finding things you like doing.
Speaker 1: But let's go back to varticle of primary. You're the
Speaker 1: oldest of three kids. Your dad is doing lots of things, authors, speaker,
Speaker 1: management consultant, your mom's a school teacher. Those primary school days,
Speaker 1: what did did you have fantasies? I mean, was medicine
Speaker 1: already on the horizon for you.
Speaker 2: It wasn't you know in primary school I was a
Speaker 2: Liverpool fan. It was it was kind of football that
Speaker 2: was really you know, all that sort of took up
Speaker 2: my headspace. That and probably probably music. Medicine was late
Speaker 2: into my high school career, kind of thinking what am
Speaker 2: I going to do, and just there was something about
Speaker 2: committing to people, you know, human flourishing just seemed to
Speaker 2: sort of well open me. And that's kind of where
Speaker 2: medicine landed. So my poor brother, who's an team surgeon,
Speaker 2: you wanted to be a whole life and he just
Speaker 2: felt like, as the oldest brother, I scupper his plans
Speaker 2: and dreams just before and kind of picked medicine. So yeah,
Speaker 2: it's as I said the first question, it was really
Speaker 2: just giuristic and you know, went to what was in
Speaker 2: front of me.
Speaker 1: We have to go to food, and I may as well, well, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go there yet on your dish
Speaker 1: that you've shared with us, because perhaps I ought to
Speaker 1: warn the listener. Let's first of all, start off at
Speaker 1: the mole dinner table. There's three of you. You're the oldest.
Speaker 1: Your dad sounds like he's involved in interesting stuff. Your
Speaker 1: mom coming back with stories from school. What was going on? Firstly,
Speaker 1: what were you eating? And spoiler alert, it wasn't Vietnamese steak, Philip.
Speaker 1: We'll get snake Philip. We'll get to that in the moment.
Speaker 1: But meal times at the moles give us a sense.
Speaker 2: Of it, John, we were eating all the wrong things, okay,
Speaker 2: having sceneal, I promise you like honey smacks and strawberry
Speaker 2: pops and foods and pasta. If I to think about
Speaker 2: what we ate as kids and bless my mom. I mean,
Speaker 2: she was a stay at home mom and she looked
Speaker 2: after us and loved us and still in good health.
Speaker 2: But what we ate them and what we know now
Speaker 2: about what's good to eat and whole food and ditching
Speaker 2: the process with I'm surprised I even made it to
Speaker 2: fifty plus. So we weren't eating the right things at all,
Speaker 2: but we were eating together. I think that was huge
Speaker 2: for my CHILDO growing up, as we'd gather around a
Speaker 2: dining table and at least for one meal a day,
Speaker 2: there'd be five of us at the table sharing the
Speaker 2: day ideas thoughts. My dad would kind of lead with
Speaker 2: some sort of Bible kind of prayer and story. So
Speaker 2: it was a wonderful family time gathered around meals. And
Speaker 2: I think that was way more helpful and healthy than
Speaker 2: actually what does on our plate?
Speaker 1: All right, let's do the Vietnamese snake phill. It's sooner
Speaker 1: you than me. Why are you telling us about this?
Speaker 1: We asked you for your favorite dish and tell.
Speaker 2: Us it's the opposite, John, I mean, I know, ask
Speaker 2: the favorite dishes and you always change. Let me give
Speaker 2: you what was my antithesis of a favorite dish? We
Speaker 2: bring Vietnam? It was a toppling story. We got to
Speaker 2: a snake restaurant. Now I had a terrible fear of snakes,
Speaker 2: so already this is a big stretch for me. We
Speaker 2: get to the restaurant, the owner sees the camera, he
Speaker 2: sees the lights, brings out this prized cobra and starts
Speaker 2: kind of with its tail, manipulating the snake. It's obviously
Speaker 2: been defanged, but the snake's rarey. It's beautiful. Team. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's just the cameraman's you know, in his element and
Speaker 2: then out of the blue. John. And this is if
Speaker 2: you're listening to this, you might want to turn the
Speaker 2: volume down. For a moment out of the blue, this
Speaker 2: this restaurant snake. Restaurant owner guts the snake, just takes
Speaker 2: a life, cuts its heart out, puts it in a
Speaker 2: little glass with a little bit of blood, a shot glass.
Speaker 2: The heart is still beating, and then he hands it
Speaker 2: to me. It's like a guest of honor. And camera's
Speaker 2: kind of rolling up on me and here I am
Speaker 2: with a beating snake's heart and a glass of blood,
Speaker 2: and I kind of got a down it because that's
Speaker 2: the respectful thing to do in that culture. It was.
Speaker 2: It was awful. I mean, I felt terrible doing it.
Speaker 2: It went out on air, actually, and that's the when
Speaker 2: email was still fairly new. You know, we just got
Speaker 2: more hate mail than I'd ever gotten for something like that.
Speaker 2: And I can understand now why it was. Guys, this
Speaker 2: is culturally appropriate and acceptable in Vietnam. Quite the opposite.
Speaker 2: But this is the beauty of cultures. And this is
Speaker 2: what we're trying to teach you. But my word, and
Speaker 2: in fact, later that evening was a bottle of wine
Speaker 2: on the table, John that had bamboo shoots in it.
Speaker 2: You do you know what a bad shoot is? You
Speaker 2: know that we can sell it to ask someone who
Speaker 2: could barely speak English, like, what why do you why
Speaker 2: are you good bamboo shoots on this wine? You know?
Speaker 2: And he came with a big grin in his face.
Speaker 2: And it turns out again this is snake penis wine.
Speaker 2: Had penis full of them.
Speaker 1: Well, they did have penises until they made the wine.
Speaker 2: I guess that just makes my skin crawl. And I
Speaker 2: thought I should share that with you, just as an
Speaker 2: you know, an empty to what you normally hear on
Speaker 2: the show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I suppose some nostalgia for the honey smacks,
Speaker 1: as bad as they might be for you. I want
Speaker 1: to talk about your book, Michael, because because this reflects
Speaker 1: what I understand to be a very very central part
Speaker 1: of your life now. Peter Attire m D. Is the author,
Speaker 1: co written with Bill Gifford. Some people may know the book.
Speaker 1: It's called Outlive The Science and Art of Longevity. Is
Speaker 1: it fair to say this is your new central passion?
Speaker 1: And if so, tell us why.
Speaker 2: I think what Atya did is he captured a passion
Speaker 2: in many of us. And the big idea behind behind
Speaker 2: out Live is focus on health span, not lifespan. Lifespan
Speaker 2: is how we live global average seventy three. Health span
Speaker 2: is how long we live free of disease and disability,
Speaker 2: and the average is around sixty three, which means John,
Speaker 2: for ten years, we are dying slowly, and that's what
Speaker 2: we want to avoid. As a doctor, I was trying
Speaker 2: to extend lifespan. That was kind of the old way
Speaker 2: of looking at things. Medicine two point zero, medicine three
Speaker 2: point oh, says guys, let's look at health span, let's
Speaker 2: look at quality of life, let's look at good years
Speaker 2: as opposed to long years. And he just dives into
Speaker 2: the science, and it's good science, and it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's just there's such valuable information that it's a tough
Speaker 2: read if you're not medical, if you don't know any games.
Speaker 2: But the concept is just a slam dug. It tells
Speaker 2: the story about Toathonis in Greek folks or to Furnas
Speaker 2: ask the god's for eternal life. They gave it to him.
Speaker 2: It was overjoyed until he started to get older and
Speaker 2: older and older and more decrept and suddenly relatives should
Speaker 2: have asked for eternal youth too, because getting older is
Speaker 2: just awful. And that's the premise of the book. And
Speaker 2: the science is there. It's a good read if you
Speaker 2: hadn't read it, highly recommended.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go from good life to good times. We
Speaker 1: asked you to pick a song. You picked bon Jovi
Speaker 1: Born to Be My Baby, all the way back in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight. Normally we play in a little soft
Speaker 1: intro of a song, but this one begins with a bang.
Speaker 1: So do tell us why you picked this and then
Speaker 1: we'll play out with it.
Speaker 2: I don't have a tattoo, John, but if I did,
Speaker 2: it might say something like bon Jovi forever. I was
Speaker 2: a huge fan. There's all of my big disappointments in life.
Speaker 2: I love Bussy Kamalo to Bits. My fellow co host,
Speaker 2: we had an opportunity to interview John Bonavie and she
Speaker 2: took it and I like, you just don't know what
Speaker 2: you've done.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean you got the snake cards and I think.
Speaker 2: That, yeah, exactly. You know this is the flip side.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you why that song in particular is special
Speaker 2: to me, John. It's it triggers all sorts of nostalgia.
Speaker 2: And there's a medical term for what that is. A
Speaker 2: contra member quite now, but I was lip syncing in
Speaker 2: the age of millieven Lily remember that, yes, yes, this
Speaker 2: song on stage, Born to Be My Baby by Bono
Speaker 2: Vi guitar in hand, just one big you know, fake
Speaker 2: fake musician, and a young girl walked in at the
Speaker 2: back who was gorgeous, looked at me. I looked at her,
Speaker 2: just kind of this moment. And I've been married to
Speaker 2: that young girl for a big partner two the timing
Speaker 2: thanks her, in fact, for three years. So I met
Speaker 2: my wife singing bon Jovi is Born to Be My Baby,
Speaker 2: will pretending to sing it anyway, And that's why that
Speaker 2: song's just got this phenomenal nostalgia attached to it.
Speaker 1: Well, fabulous, thank you. Wish we had more time, but
Speaker 1: let's play out with bon Jovi, A classic from nine