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Speaker 1: Welcome to two percent. I'm your host, Michael Lieser. So

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Speaker 1: there is a lot of focus on longevity right now.

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Speaker 1: Everybody wants to live longer, and if you were at

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Speaker 1: all interested in longevity, you have probably heard of the

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Speaker 1: Blue zones. These are places on Earth where people live

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Speaker 1: well past one hundred years of age. There are Netflix

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Speaker 1: series about the Blue Zones, there are books about the

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Speaker 1: Blue zones, and these things all tell us exactly what

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Speaker 1: we can do to live like people in the Blue

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Speaker 1: zones and in theory reach past age one hundred. But

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Speaker 1: there's a little problem, well a very big problem, and

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Speaker 1: that's that the Blue zones might be one of the

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Speaker 1: longest cons in history. That is what my guest today

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Speaker 1: concluded after he dove deeply into the data and found

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Speaker 1: a lot of critical airs. I'm talking to Saul Justin Newman.

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Speaker 1: He studies population aging at Oxford and he is also

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Speaker 1: a researcher at University College London, and he's got a

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Speaker 1: new book it's called Morbid Debunking Modern Longevity Science. So

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Speaker 1: he's going to talk to us about what he found

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Speaker 1: about the Blue zones and what it can tell us

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Speaker 1: about the new science of longevity. Saul Justin Newman, thanks

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Speaker 1: for coming on the show.

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Speaker 2: Thank you very much for having me.

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Speaker 1: All Right, here's where I want to start with something

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Speaker 1: very basic. What are the blue zones?

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Speaker 2: Blue zones were supposed to be regions of the world

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Speaker 2: where people attained remarkable ages at remarkable rates, and they

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Speaker 2: usually did. The remarkable age is age one hundred.

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Speaker 1: And how did they start? How did this idea even began?

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Speaker 2: I think the idea is how it began as a

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Speaker 2: bit of a mystery, because the process was to go

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Speaker 2: to an island of a European country, which is Sardinia,

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Speaker 2: and say, people here may live a very long time.

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Speaker 2: Let's check now why that particular island was chosen as

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Speaker 2: a bit obscure, but the basic idea was someone ran

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Speaker 2: a small stuff. They decided that this region of a

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Speaker 2: very poor part of Italy was living an extremely long time,

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Speaker 2: and they called it a blue zone. Amusingly, they also

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Speaker 2: jumped straight to the conclusion of why people were living

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Speaker 2: a long time in this area, And I love this

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Speaker 2: because it hasn't made it into the lifestyle advice. But

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Speaker 2: the original conclusion was because of all the incest. Of

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Speaker 2: all the incest, Yeah, the person who had done this

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Speaker 2: had gone to this island and decided that incest was

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Speaker 2: causing extreme longevity in these little mountain towns.

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Speaker 1: I did not hear about that when I went to

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Speaker 1: the Blue Zone's website. I think that was told to

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Speaker 1: eat sardines or something instead.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, a little bit by design, I suspect.

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Speaker 1: So then it expands, So it starts in Sardinia, and

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Speaker 1: then they start tacking on places that are considered blue zones.

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Speaker 1: How did that play out?

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Speaker 2: It played out effectively as a sort of magazine article,

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Speaker 2: not as a scientific process. We had a gentleman arrive

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Speaker 2: from out of the blue and he picked up this

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Speaker 2: idea of regions where people live forever, and he wrote

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Speaker 2: an article, this is the third most popular article in

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Speaker 2: National Geographic of all time, about these three regions where

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Speaker 2: people supposedly lived past one hundred. One is in California

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Speaker 2: in Low Melinda, one is in Okinawa, and the other

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Speaker 2: is this Sardinian blue zone. And the idea was that

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Speaker 2: if you do as the Romans do effectively and behave

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Speaker 2: like they're doing these three very very different places, you

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Speaker 2: too could live past age one hundred. It's a very

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Speaker 2: alluring idea, and it launched a sort of lifestyle chain

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Speaker 2: of products, starting with cookbooks and moving on to absolutely

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Speaker 2: everything under the sun. I think they even have a cologne.

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Speaker 1: Now nice and then so it has they identify these

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Speaker 1: three places, and then they start adding on places. Right,

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Speaker 1: there's like coast, different places. But the idea is typically

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Speaker 1: they will identify something these people do, these people who

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Speaker 1: are supposedly long living, and therefore that is kind of

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Speaker 1: the key to living longer for you as well.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's a central claim that people in

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Speaker 2: these places live very, very long times, and then there's

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Speaker 2: these subsidiary claims that we've figured out why this happens,

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Speaker 2: and there are these nine sets of behaviors that are

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Speaker 2: why people in these regions live a long time.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and what are some of those behaviors?

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Speaker 2: Absurdly drinking every day, which is a bit of a stretch,

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Speaker 2: you know. I find it stounding that that's out of

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Speaker 2: number one, especially because Low Melender is a tea total place.

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Speaker 2: But the others, you know, they fit neatly into preconceived

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Speaker 2: ideas of what we think is healthy. There is so

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Speaker 2: gentle exercise is probably the most sensible, and then there

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Speaker 2: are these vaguely defined sort of feel good sounding concepts

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Speaker 2: like being the right tribe or connects with your neighbors

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Speaker 2: or hang out with loved ones. You know, stuff that

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Speaker 2: you want to do anyway, and it's very easily marketable.

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Speaker 1: To your point on the marketing, why do you think

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Speaker 1: this idea took off so well? Was it just like

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Speaker 1: a brilliant packaging around basic advice with something science and

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Speaker 1: sounding about people all living older precisely?

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Speaker 2: And it's not just that it's a proven market strategy

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Speaker 2: going back to I mean, going back to the first

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Speaker 2: Emperor of China. I mean it's not a new sales

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Speaker 2: pitch to say that, oh, I have the secret to

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Speaker 2: living forever, and you just follow my advice, pay me

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Speaker 2: my money, and I'll get you there. Now, the beauty

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Speaker 2: of that is, first, if people don't live forever, they

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Speaker 2: can't complain because they're dead, so your customer complaints division

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Speaker 2: has very little to do. But also it's something that

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Speaker 2: everybody wants to hear, right especially now we know what

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Speaker 2: contributes to longevity, and it's going to see a doctor.

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Speaker 2: It's exercise, don't drink, don't smoke right now. If you

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Speaker 2: don't want to do that, then you are wide open

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Speaker 2: for sales pitches, right, really wide open, and it's really

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Speaker 2: kind of an easy win to even just imagine that

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Speaker 2: there's a pill that will make you live longer. But

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Speaker 2: even if the placebos, it's an appealing idea. It's sort of,

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Speaker 2: you know, here's my anxiety reduction process for the day.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and especially if you like to drink. You see

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Speaker 1: that and you go, I like this blue zones idea.

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Speaker 1: They drink. I'm going to drink too. That's great.

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Speaker 2: Exactly the pitch to California Wine Months, like they specifically

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Speaker 2: say what kind of wine you should try? Right, it's

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Speaker 2: you know, go and get Sardinian kanna now wine like why,

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Speaker 2: you know, who knows? But this is a very easy sell.

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Speaker 2: And yeah, it's it's also backing up off a sales

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Speaker 2: pitch that was around in the seventies that was essentially

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Speaker 2: exactly the same. You know, in the seventies there was

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Speaker 2: something called longevity zones pitched in the same magazine, pitched

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Speaker 2: in National Geographic by a professor of medicine Harvard called

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Speaker 2: Alexander Leff. Now let's just say these haven't exactly held up.

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Speaker 2: You know, one is in the Hansa Valley of Pakistan,

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Speaker 2: We've got a one in a place called Viilka Bamba

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Speaker 2: and Ecuador, and we've got another in Soviet ab Kazia, Georgia.

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Speaker 2: Now these aren't centers of longevity. And the short answer

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Speaker 2: to why these places looked on paper, why like people

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Speaker 2: living past one hundred, was that they were just committing

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Speaker 2: pension fraud or they had just simply no idea how

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Speaker 2: old they were.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, let's get into that. So how did you start

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Speaker 1: to become skeptical of this idea? How did that tell

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Speaker 1: us that whole story of how unfolded and how you

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Speaker 1: ended up writing about this.

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Speaker 2: I began just with a friend sending me a scientific

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Speaker 2: paper because I'm a huge note it's unapologetic at this point.

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Speaker 2: And I finished in medical science doctorate and a friend

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Speaker 2: of mine had sent me a paper saying, you know,

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Speaker 2: you're interested in how long people live. His paper, the

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Speaker 2: paper involved was in the top scientific journal in the world,

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Speaker 2: and it involved someone accidentally rounding off most of their

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Speaker 2: data to zero by accident and then publishing the results.

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Speaker 2: And that's I mean, that's a shocking thing to do,

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Speaker 2: and it got me interesting. It's a huge problem if

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Speaker 2: you use the correct column in the spreadsheet. The whole

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Speaker 2: thing fell apart and you reached the opposite conclusion. But

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Speaker 2: the conclusion was about how long it is possible to live?

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Speaker 2: You know, what is the limit to human life? So

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Speaker 2: it's a really compelling question, how long is it possible

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Speaker 2: for me to live? How long? And the fact that

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Speaker 2: this debate was being undertaken with such terrible evidence was

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Speaker 2: amazing to me. And it became more amazing when the

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Speaker 2: other top journal in the scientific journal in the world

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Speaker 2: published papers stating exactly the opposite conclusion to the first paper,

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Speaker 2: and that was based on something even worse. So what

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Speaker 2: these people had done is they'd taken every one hundred

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Speaker 2: and five year old or record of one hundred and

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Speaker 2: five year old in Italy and they had fit a

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Speaker 2: model to it. But it was the most biased mathematical

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Speaker 2: model possible. It was the only one that gave them

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Speaker 2: a publishable result. And so here you have two halves

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Speaker 2: of an academic debate. Neither of them are remotely close

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Speaker 2: to following the rules or having any integrity. And it

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Speaker 2: dragged me in against my will, into this question of

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Speaker 2: how long is it possible to live? Do this start

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Speaker 2: or even make any sense?

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Speaker 1: How did that get you the blue zones? Eventually you

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Speaker 1: start kind of stripping away at this question. You're kind

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Speaker 1: of like a thorn in the side of these researchers.

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Speaker 1: And then what happens.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean more than a thorn. It's it's a

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Speaker 2: massive embarrassment to have to retract something from these from

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Speaker 2: these papers, and that's exactly what these groups should do.

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Speaker 2: But I was sitting on a bus and came up

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Speaker 2: with theoretical idea. It's a very non intuitive theoretical idea

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Speaker 2: because usually in science get you get measurement error. You

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Speaker 2: know what happens. It happens for the Hubble space telescope,

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Speaker 2: and happens for the particle colliders in Switzerland. You always

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Speaker 2: get measurement error, and usually you can ignore it. You

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Speaker 2: can just say, look, who cares, there's a small amount

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Speaker 2: of random error. It washes out in the statistical model. Well,

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Speaker 2: I found out that mathematically, in a survival process, that's

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Speaker 2: not true, and you get this very non intuitive result

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Speaker 2: where the number of errors grows exponentially over age. So

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Speaker 2: by the time you reach these advanced ages, you theoretically

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Speaker 2: expect all of them to be trash. Just it's much

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Speaker 2: easier to be an error in paperwork than someone who

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Speaker 2: has outlived the rest of humanity, way easier. And this

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Speaker 2: is especially the case because a quarter of the world's

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Speaker 2: children still don't get a birth certificate. So if you

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Speaker 2: go back one hundred years when these people were supposedly born,

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Speaker 2: has any paperwork, It gets made up at some point

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Speaker 2: between then and now, and if you make a mistake

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Speaker 2: in that process, you end up being one hundred and five.

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Speaker 2: And that's effectively what these old age hair records are.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, there airs in the record keeping. So to walk

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Speaker 1: us through, especially with the blue zone, what are some

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Speaker 1: of the errors you've found in these supposed people who

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Speaker 1: are living past one hundred and five?

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Speaker 2: Well, the Oknawen one was extraordinary because I didn't find this.

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Speaker 2: The Japanese government found out that most of the people

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Speaker 2: in Japan who were over age one hundred, I mean

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Speaker 2: more than eighty two percent were dead. They were long dead,

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Speaker 2: so most of them been killed in World War Two.

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Speaker 2: And the remarkable thing is in Japan you have this

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Speaker 2: sort of self registration of who has died in your household,

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Speaker 2: and if an American plane puts a bomb through the household,

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Speaker 2: who reports all the deaths, nobody does right, and you're

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Speaker 2: keep living on paper. Right. So there was this amazing

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Speaker 2: finding in Okinawa that if your town had been firebombed,

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Speaker 2: you could predict around eighty percent of the variation in

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Speaker 2: people reaching one hundred. So if your town's been firebombed,

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Speaker 2: everyone reaches one hundred.

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Speaker 1: Right, because they died in nineteen forty four, exactly.

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Speaker 2: The real secret to longevity, right. And the same goes

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Speaker 2: with fire bombing cities where all the records are kept.

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Speaker 2: So the Japanese government had gone out to effectively have

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Speaker 2: a celebration of old people in Tokyo, and they'd gone

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Speaker 2: looking for the worlds for the oldest man in Tokyo.

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Speaker 2: And this bizarre process has played out where city officials

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Speaker 2: come around to the house. They talked to the grand daughter,

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Speaker 2: and the granddaughter says, he's out of Gifu Prefectory. He's

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Speaker 2: gone for the day, and Guefoo Prefecture is four hundredilometers away.

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Speaker 2: The guys one hundred and eleven, So it's a bit

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Speaker 2: of a stretch.

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Speaker 1: It's one hundred and five year old guy just taking

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Speaker 1: a little jount.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred and eleven. One hundred and eleven year

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Speaker 2: old guy apparently he's taken a job, and when they

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Speaker 2: come back, she's like, oh, he's out again, Like I

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Speaker 2: guess if he's down at the girlfriend's or something. So

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Speaker 2: this keeps happening until they get a bit concerned and

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Speaker 2: the grand daughter turns up to the police station and says, oh,

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Speaker 2: we've had a terrible thing going on. The granddad has

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Speaker 2: barricaded himself into his room and is fighting off the

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Speaker 2: entire family, which again for one hundred and eleven year old,

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Speaker 2: is quite the feet right, yeah, a strong guy with

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Speaker 2: a strong guy. When the police turn up, he's in

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Speaker 2: the room and he's been in the room for thirty

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Speaker 2: years dead and they have been collecting the pension the

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Speaker 2: entire time and living in living in the house like

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Speaker 2: the whole extended family. And there's another guy in the

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Speaker 2: backpack at the end of the bed. Now that's this

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Speaker 2: is surprisingly normal for one hundred and five year olds

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Speaker 2: have That actually happens all the time.

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Speaker 1: So people are effectively saying that their relatives, who in

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Speaker 1: this case died thirty years ago are alive on paper,

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Speaker 1: because that way you can keep cash and grandpa's checks

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Speaker 1: from the government pension checks exactly.

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Speaker 2: They had cashed out roughly one hundred grand in his

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Speaker 2: pension the day that the city officials had come around. Right,

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Speaker 2: So there's a big withdrawal. That's normal. But then they

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Speaker 2: go looking for everyone else who is very old, because

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Speaker 2: they discovered the oldest woman in Tokyo hasn't been seen

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Speaker 2: since nineteen eighty six. And they go around all of Japan.

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Speaker 2: Now they check ninety two percent of cases and they

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Speaker 2: find that eighty two percent of them are dead. Now

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Speaker 2: that's over two hundred and thirty thousand people who are

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Speaker 2: dead in reality and alive on paper. And this is

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Speaker 2: data that the Blue Zones demographers had just said was

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Speaker 2: the best in the world.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, practically this plays out for the listener. You hear

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Speaker 1: some advice from Blue Zones that there's these so many

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Speaker 1: people over one hundred five in Japan, and therefore you

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Speaker 1: should eat the food they eat, you should do this

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Speaker 1: thing they do. But it turns out they've all died

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Speaker 1: in the eighties.

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Speaker 2: They've all died in the eighties. And not only have

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Speaker 2: they all died in or in the forties, not only

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Speaker 2: have they all died but you know, this is supposed

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Speaker 2: to be based on interviews with two hundred and sixty

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Speaker 2: odd centenarians. Now those have never been published. And if

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Speaker 2: I had the secret to eternal life and it was

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Speaker 2: in a few interviews, I would publish those interviews. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: and this is much more a sort of oh, trust me, bro,

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Speaker 2: these interviews say what to eat? Where's the data? Because

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Speaker 2: the Japanese government is saying eighty two percent of these

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Speaker 2: people at least are dead. And this happens in every

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Speaker 2: blue zone. I looked at the Greek blue zone, right,

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Speaker 2: they had a really similar process play out. They had

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Speaker 2: more than nine thousand centenarians on paper. The global financial

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Speaker 2: crisis comes along and the effectively the Greek government first

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Speaker 2: do a review find roughly two hundred three hundred errors.

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Speaker 2: But the German government comes in and says, we'll not

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Speaker 2: give you a penny until you really check. And it

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Speaker 2: turns out at least seventy two percent of these people

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Speaker 2: are collecting the pension from the graveyard. And after that,

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Speaker 2: the island of Yourkorea, which is one of these blue zones,

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Speaker 2: just has no centenarians.

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Speaker 1: Wow. So this feels like one of those where I

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Speaker 1: think if it were we looked at these numbers, we

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Speaker 1: think there's a lot of people who are centenarians there.

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Speaker 1: We rolled with the idea, but the fact that then

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Speaker 1: there was a claim around what we talked to all

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Speaker 1: of them, but then they never published the interviews. That's

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Speaker 1: where it starts to feel a little more sketchy to me.

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Speaker 2: It really becomes sketchy when you look at the low Melinda.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk about that, because in the US, you

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Speaker 1: would think we had good record keeping and things like that.

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Speaker 2: The US is really surprising in this regard, right. We

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Speaker 2: we sort of carry with us this idea that if

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Speaker 2: something's written down officially then it actually is is probably true.

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Speaker 2: But let's just ignore that for the moment and just

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Speaker 2: look at Loma Linda on the face of it. Well,

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Speaker 2: the CDC measures Loma Linda for longevity and it is

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Speaker 2: nowhere near the best place in the US, and at

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Speaker 2: least a quarter of the US and perhaps three quarters

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Speaker 2: of the US has higher longevity than Loma Linda. Now

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Speaker 2: that's the independent data. So when I took the independent

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Speaker 2: data to the founder of the Blue Zones, I said,

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Speaker 2: where is your evidence the people here live past one hundred. Now,

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Speaker 2: he has admitted in The New York Times and to

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Speaker 2: Science Magazine that he came up with Loma Linda because

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Speaker 2: his editor asked him to, oh wow, find America's blue zone. Right,

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Speaker 2: he asked him to find America's blue zone. The next day,

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Speaker 2: on the drive between his house in La and Las Vegas,

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Speaker 2: there's a turn at Loma Linda. And for twenty years

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Speaker 2: he has marketed this as if there was the fountain

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Speaker 2: of youth beneath the freeway next to the Costco.

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Speaker 1: No Costco's pretty powerful man who knows it, right, and

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Speaker 1: right near.

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Speaker 2: The jumper juice there's the secret. Right. It's astonishing. And

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Speaker 2: then the follow up claim is that, oh I forgot

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Speaker 2: to delist it as a blue zone. Now again from perspective,

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Speaker 2: this guy has sold part of his business to Adventist

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Speaker 2: Health because there's an Adventist community on the basis of

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Speaker 2: what I don't know what is the basis of this

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Speaker 2: twenty years of relentless marketing. But then there's the meta problem, right,

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Speaker 2: there's a deeper problem here, because this isn't a matter

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Speaker 2: of you've got a bunch of people going along with

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Speaker 2: a mail order scheme. I mean, in a sense it is,

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Speaker 2: but you have one hundred scientific papers on this place.

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Speaker 2: You have prominent scientists right at the top of the

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Speaker 2: field backing it up. Now, if it's made up, why

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Speaker 2: are they unable to say that it's a fantasy? See

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Speaker 2: and you know you find this again in Costa Rica.

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Speaker 2: The basis of finding the Costa Rican blue zone was

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Speaker 2: mister but paid a Costa Rican demographer and they went

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Speaker 2: out the next day and discovered a Costa Rican blue zone. Now,

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Speaker 2: when the un measured that data, they said that Costa

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Speaker 2: Eca was quote bottom, near the bottom of the pack

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Speaker 2: in terms of late life survival. So really the question

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Speaker 2: is why are our supposedly independent scientists not able to

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Speaker 2: detect a twenty year fantasy? And this is one of

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Speaker 2: the most popular concepts in this field. And I've had

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Speaker 2: no answers to this.

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Speaker 1: Why do you think this has gotten so much coverage

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Speaker 1: even in science circles? Like you said, I.

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Speaker 2: Think the science circles are just as susceptible to this

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Speaker 2: beautiful idea that things are better far in a faraway place. Right.

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Speaker 2: Most science is done by white, Western educated people, whatever

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Speaker 2: that label, that sort of catch all label throw on it.

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Speaker 2: And I think a lot of people those people are

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Speaker 2: the target of this marketing, and they've brought into it,

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Speaker 2: and now it's turned out to be bank they're hugely embarrassed.

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Speaker 2: I mean there's a sort of a field wide embarrassment

359
00:20:12,160 --> 00:20:15,199
Speaker 2: in the demographic community that we've sat around and just

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Speaker 2: sort of believe this. Not just the first time, this

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Speaker 2: is multiple times we've bought the same story and it's

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Speaker 2: turned out to be bunk. So, you know, in one sense,

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Speaker 2: it's just that we are susceptible to this marketing idea

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00:20:28,040 --> 00:20:30,840
Speaker 2: that shangrile Ara is there and all we have to

365
00:20:30,880 --> 00:20:32,840
Speaker 2: do is go there and act like it and will

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Speaker 2: be fine. It's very alluring, especially because you get to

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Speaker 2: go for a holiday, beach holiday degrease. Right, it doesn't work,

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Speaker 2: but we've bought it. Anyway.

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Speaker 1: What do you think that says about us?

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Speaker 2: I think it says we're still in this mindset of

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Speaker 2: monster leone. Right. We want there to be a fountain

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Speaker 2: of youth because it's easier than the tough reality of

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Speaker 2: not just taking care of your health. But I get

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Speaker 2: asked all the time, what's the secret to living a

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Speaker 2: long time? One of the most uncomfortable answers is be

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Speaker 2: born in a rich place that has free healthcare. Right now,

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Speaker 2: especially in America, that's not a message you really want

378
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Speaker 2: to hear because you can't do anything about it. I mean,

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Speaker 2: one of the key problems in American health seems to

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Speaker 2: be that you buy fake medicines because you can't afford

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Speaker 2: real medicines. It's just a simple fundamental problem. It's not

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Speaker 2: the people who mind. This is not their personal fault.

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Speaker 2: There's a systemic problem here where if you have someone

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Speaker 2: who can't afford their cancer ments, they will buy anything,

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Speaker 2: and an industry is developed to feed that and this

386
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Speaker 2: is part of that industry. The longevity industry is as

387
00:21:57,800 --> 00:22:02,479
Speaker 2: part of this framing that we can give you a

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Speaker 2: secret pill that's ten times just so it's ten times

389
00:22:05,960 --> 00:22:09,040
Speaker 2: cheaper than the real stuff, unless you're pitching to billionaires.

390
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Speaker 2: And that has really rotted out the evidence base of

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Speaker 2: medicine here. I mean, it's really shockingly rotting out the

392
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Speaker 2: evidence base of medicine. We have these laws coming in

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Speaker 2: to the states that effectively throw out the hippocratic oath,

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Speaker 2: and they're being pushed by longevity research. The Alliance for

395
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Speaker 2: Longevity Initiatives is pushing this idea that we can I mean,

396
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Speaker 2: this is now a law on the books. You can

397
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Speaker 2: now give a person an experimental treatment of any dose

398
00:22:40,359 --> 00:22:42,080
Speaker 2: for any reason, as long as you say it's to

399
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Speaker 2: extend longevity, and if they die, you are not liable.

400
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Speaker 1: Oh wow, it's a little alarming. Yeah, we're going to

401
00:22:51,280 --> 00:22:52,679
Speaker 1: take a quick break and then we are going to

402
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Speaker 1: talk to Saul about the fallout that happened after he

403
00:22:55,440 --> 00:23:06,199
Speaker 1: released his findings into the world of longevity. So you

404
00:23:06,320 --> 00:23:09,199
Speaker 1: do this paper on the blue zones, and you have

405
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Speaker 1: this new book Morbid Debunking Modern Longevity Science, which is

406
00:23:13,160 --> 00:23:16,320
Speaker 1: an amazing read. And I also have to say, I'm

407
00:23:16,320 --> 00:23:20,520
Speaker 1: a writer. When I have to open books and read

408
00:23:20,520 --> 00:23:23,200
Speaker 1: books by scientists, I sometimes go, Okay, this is probably

409
00:23:23,200 --> 00:23:25,040
Speaker 1: going to be a little bit boring, but I'm going

410
00:23:25,080 --> 00:23:27,359
Speaker 1: to learn something and I accept that. Dude, you're a

411
00:23:27,400 --> 00:23:30,400
Speaker 1: really funny writer, and I loved it for that. This

412
00:23:30,440 --> 00:23:33,399
Speaker 1: is an amazing read. But so the paper comes out,

413
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Speaker 1: you got the book coming out. What happens when the

414
00:23:35,840 --> 00:23:38,600
Speaker 1: paper comes out for you personally? Like, how does the

415
00:23:39,160 --> 00:23:40,560
Speaker 1: how does this field react?

416
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Speaker 2: It's incomparable the feeling of stirring up so many people

417
00:23:44,760 --> 00:23:48,560
Speaker 2: all at once and having It's if I've cast out

418
00:23:48,600 --> 00:23:51,199
Speaker 2: stamp collectors and every stamp collector on earth is suddenly

419
00:23:51,240 --> 00:23:53,760
Speaker 2: emailing me like in old caps, you know, oh my god,

420
00:23:53,800 --> 00:23:56,840
Speaker 2: how could you possibly you know, run down the field

421
00:23:56,880 --> 00:24:03,240
Speaker 2: of flatly it's the torrent coming in is mixed with

422
00:24:04,280 --> 00:24:07,520
Speaker 2: people from other fields. They are laughing the backsides off, basically,

423
00:24:07,600 --> 00:24:12,080
Speaker 2: like I compare it to I'm a hedgehog that's accidentally

424
00:24:12,119 --> 00:24:16,000
Speaker 2: wanted into a balloon factory. You know, people are losing

425
00:24:16,040 --> 00:24:18,480
Speaker 2: their minds trying to get rid of me and not

426
00:24:18,640 --> 00:24:23,040
Speaker 2: knowing what to do. Really, And you know, I had

427
00:24:23,080 --> 00:24:27,359
Speaker 2: people emailing my boss they said you have to fire

428
00:24:27,400 --> 00:24:29,560
Speaker 2: this guy, and they're like, why is he a bad plan?

429
00:24:29,680 --> 00:24:33,919
Speaker 2: Scientists like, what's the problem. Some of the peripheral stuff

430
00:24:34,000 --> 00:24:37,800
Speaker 2: is accidentally hilarious, right. I opened the book with a

431
00:24:38,680 --> 00:24:42,680
Speaker 2: discussion of a gentleman from Moscow who has decided the

432
00:24:42,680 --> 00:24:45,320
Speaker 2: world's oldest woman is a fake, which is, you know,

433
00:24:45,359 --> 00:24:48,040
Speaker 2: it's fine, wants to dig up the corpse, wants me

434
00:24:48,080 --> 00:24:51,880
Speaker 2: to help, and has decided to see see the Queen

435
00:24:51,880 --> 00:24:55,040
Speaker 2: and Vladimir Putin and basically everybody he's ever heard of.

436
00:24:55,600 --> 00:24:58,280
Speaker 1: Into this just standard every day email.

437
00:24:58,440 --> 00:25:01,080
Speaker 2: Standard every day email. And I mean I have to

438
00:25:01,080 --> 00:25:02,840
Speaker 2: dig it up because I found out the beauty of

439
00:25:02,880 --> 00:25:07,000
Speaker 2: this is the apparently the Kremlin has to respond. So

440
00:25:07,040 --> 00:25:09,240
Speaker 2: I've got to find the Kremlin response to can we

441
00:25:09,320 --> 00:25:11,560
Speaker 2: players dig up the world's oldest woman's corpse which has

442
00:25:11,560 --> 00:25:15,280
Speaker 2: been on the ground for twenty years, because I want

443
00:25:15,280 --> 00:25:21,280
Speaker 2: to know it was Vladimir Putin's take on this obvious

444
00:25:21,800 --> 00:25:25,639
Speaker 2: why not reach out? You know, this astonishing sort of

445
00:25:29,119 --> 00:25:33,240
Speaker 2: Kingstone Cops approached to science. It was always deeply funny

446
00:25:33,240 --> 00:25:33,440
Speaker 2: to me.

447
00:25:34,280 --> 00:25:37,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you pointed out and everyone gets mad.

448
00:25:37,320 --> 00:25:40,040
Speaker 1: At the same time, the paper is great and you

449
00:25:40,119 --> 00:25:42,680
Speaker 1: get a ton of you ge a ton of notoriety

450
00:25:42,680 --> 00:25:44,640
Speaker 1: from it. I mean, it gets covered everywhere like it's

451
00:25:44,640 --> 00:25:47,440
Speaker 1: a big moment because people go, oh, yeah, this this

452
00:25:47,520 --> 00:25:49,000
Speaker 1: makes sense. This guy's say it is right.

453
00:25:49,440 --> 00:25:53,919
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean that's that's the beauty of having people

454
00:25:53,960 --> 00:25:56,160
Speaker 2: in parallel fields who deal with this kind of data

455
00:25:56,160 --> 00:25:59,680
Speaker 2: all the time. Because in epidemiology there's a joke, you know,

456
00:26:00,160 --> 00:26:02,440
Speaker 2: map is a poverty map. You know, you want to

457
00:26:02,440 --> 00:26:05,560
Speaker 2: look at disease prevalence. Every map is a poverty map.

458
00:26:05,920 --> 00:26:08,240
Speaker 2: But in this case, the poverty map is saying the

459
00:26:09,400 --> 00:26:12,040
Speaker 2: worst of poverty, the more one hundred and five year olds,

460
00:26:12,800 --> 00:26:17,080
Speaker 2: And that simple cognitive dissonance of you want to lift

461
00:26:17,080 --> 00:26:19,840
Speaker 2: to one hundred and five, be dead, broke and live

462
00:26:19,880 --> 00:26:21,840
Speaker 2: in the worst place possible. Is funny.

463
00:26:22,440 --> 00:26:25,159
Speaker 1: So I think one of the big bear you poked

464
00:26:25,240 --> 00:26:29,159
Speaker 1: is the sort of blue zone empire. Obviously. I mean,

465
00:26:29,200 --> 00:26:33,159
Speaker 1: as we've talked about, it's sold to this health corporation

466
00:26:33,320 --> 00:26:35,560
Speaker 1: for what was it, like seventy five million or something

467
00:26:35,600 --> 00:26:36,160
Speaker 1: like that.

468
00:26:36,520 --> 00:26:39,159
Speaker 2: Some insane amount of money. I mean, they are making

469
00:26:39,760 --> 00:26:41,600
Speaker 2: huge amounts of money.

470
00:26:42,080 --> 00:26:45,840
Speaker 1: Describing you, Dan Bututner, who's the guy who popularized the

471
00:26:45,880 --> 00:26:49,560
Speaker 1: blue zones? He said the following quote. Saul Newman is

472
00:26:49,560 --> 00:26:54,960
Speaker 1: a plant biologist with no academic training or expertise in demography, gerontology,

473
00:26:55,119 --> 00:26:58,280
Speaker 1: or geriatrics, and has no record of publication in these

474
00:26:58,280 --> 00:27:02,520
Speaker 1: fields of study. He will fully omits or misunderstands the

475
00:27:02,640 --> 00:27:08,479
Speaker 1: rigorous age verification and statistical analysis involved in identifying blue zones.

476
00:27:09,600 --> 00:27:12,600
Speaker 1: What is your response, I've.

477
00:27:12,440 --> 00:27:17,800
Speaker 2: Been a demographer at the University of Oxford for five years. Right,

478
00:27:18,400 --> 00:27:23,120
Speaker 2: he's completely made it up. And what It's amazing that

479
00:27:23,960 --> 00:27:26,880
Speaker 2: there's now a scientific paper that says the same thing,

480
00:27:28,280 --> 00:27:30,000
Speaker 2: and then I know of there might be it seems

481
00:27:30,000 --> 00:27:33,160
Speaker 2: that there appears to be multiple and the beautiful irony

482
00:27:33,200 --> 00:27:36,000
Speaker 2: here is if you're claiming to be very good at

483
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:41,680
Speaker 2: understanding people's life history and records and you can't detect

484
00:27:41,720 --> 00:27:43,720
Speaker 2: that the guy at the University of Oxford at the

485
00:27:43,760 --> 00:27:49,680
Speaker 2: Lever Hume Center for Demographic Science as a demographer, like,

486
00:27:50,240 --> 00:27:55,159
Speaker 2: if that is beyond your powers of comprehension, what are

487
00:27:55,200 --> 00:27:59,960
Speaker 2: you doing? Like? Should I trust you? No? Not as

488
00:28:00,000 --> 00:28:01,000
Speaker 2: as far as I could kick you.

489
00:28:03,359 --> 00:28:05,160
Speaker 1: Quick break, and then we're going to talk about why

490
00:28:05,240 --> 00:28:08,359
Speaker 1: it's important to set the record straight on these topics.

491
00:28:15,400 --> 00:28:17,440
Speaker 1: So let's talk more. I mean, you kind of alluded

492
00:28:17,440 --> 00:28:21,639
Speaker 1: to this, but what's the harm in this data being wrong?

493
00:28:22,160 --> 00:28:25,800
Speaker 1: So do you feel like you're correcting the record or

494
00:28:25,920 --> 00:28:28,240
Speaker 1: is there actually harm in all this being wrong?

495
00:28:29,000 --> 00:28:31,919
Speaker 2: I mean there's a temptation to still see this is okay.

496
00:28:33,240 --> 00:28:35,040
Speaker 2: I'm fighting out a pub trivia and this is the

497
00:28:35,080 --> 00:28:39,560
Speaker 2: way I initially saw this problem. But there's an extraordinary

498
00:28:39,560 --> 00:28:45,720
Speaker 2: problem nested in this because we use this extreme old

499
00:28:45,760 --> 00:28:48,160
Speaker 2: age data as hound model for the future. We have

500
00:28:48,160 --> 00:28:51,960
Speaker 2: this optimistic model that things are going to get better

501
00:28:52,000 --> 00:28:53,960
Speaker 2: in the future. So if we want to project what's

502
00:28:54,000 --> 00:28:56,120
Speaker 2: going to happen, we need to look at the oldest

503
00:28:56,120 --> 00:28:58,440
Speaker 2: people live today, because in sixty years, that'll be us.

504
00:28:58,760 --> 00:29:03,040
Speaker 2: It's a great assumption, right assumption. But when people are

505
00:29:03,040 --> 00:29:07,400
Speaker 2: setting your pension rates, when people are setting your life insurance,

506
00:29:07,440 --> 00:29:10,880
Speaker 2: when people are planning long term for healthcare, these are

507
00:29:10,880 --> 00:29:14,720
Speaker 2: the numbers they use. And you're telling trillions of dollars

508
00:29:14,760 --> 00:29:17,320
Speaker 2: of investment. I had a firm with three hundred and

509
00:29:17,360 --> 00:29:21,840
Speaker 2: fifty billion euros in investment. Come and talk to me,

510
00:29:21,960 --> 00:29:24,240
Speaker 2: Come and ask me to talk to them. And the

511
00:29:24,280 --> 00:29:27,240
Speaker 2: reason is that they are using late life mortality models

512
00:29:27,240 --> 00:29:30,280
Speaker 2: based off this data to say how much you have

513
00:29:30,360 --> 00:29:34,080
Speaker 2: to pay into your pension. Right, because if I start

514
00:29:34,120 --> 00:29:40,360
Speaker 2: working now, I'm retiring, you know, in fifty years. And

515
00:29:40,400 --> 00:29:44,440
Speaker 2: the fact that they've been using this completely you know,

516
00:29:44,720 --> 00:29:52,120
Speaker 2: trash data to estimate those rates is very disturbing. I

517
00:29:52,160 --> 00:29:56,560
Speaker 2: mean it's extremely disturbing. One of the people a sort

518
00:29:56,560 --> 00:30:00,920
Speaker 2: of throw a pebble at in this book is responsible

519
00:30:00,960 --> 00:30:03,640
Speaker 2: for validating more than fifty percent of the one hundred

520
00:30:03,640 --> 00:30:04,680
Speaker 2: and five year olds in the world.

521
00:30:05,560 --> 00:30:10,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, and for the average listener, if these pension rates

522
00:30:10,320 --> 00:30:12,560
Speaker 1: are assuming someone's going to die much older than they

523
00:30:12,560 --> 00:30:14,240
Speaker 1: probably will, you're going to have to pay more because

524
00:30:14,240 --> 00:30:16,000
Speaker 1: they're assuming you're going to live longer than you will

525
00:30:16,680 --> 00:30:17,120
Speaker 1: you have to.

526
00:30:17,040 --> 00:30:20,480
Speaker 2: Pay way more every single day. Every single day you'll

527
00:30:20,480 --> 00:30:24,680
Speaker 2: have to pay more. Right, And so it's that it

528
00:30:24,760 --> 00:30:26,920
Speaker 2: is that simple, and it's that shocking that it has

529
00:30:26,960 --> 00:30:29,440
Speaker 2: its direct effect. You know, the difference between nine and

530
00:30:29,560 --> 00:30:32,560
Speaker 2: ten percent going to your pension rate is decided by

531
00:30:33,560 --> 00:30:36,600
Speaker 2: people in London who set the insurance rates that base

532
00:30:36,720 --> 00:30:39,720
Speaker 2: their decisions off my colleagues at the University of Oxford,

533
00:30:40,440 --> 00:30:45,400
Speaker 2: and governments who base their data off off United Nations

534
00:30:45,560 --> 00:30:48,840
Speaker 2: estimates of the oldest people in life today. Now I

535
00:30:48,880 --> 00:30:51,959
Speaker 2: haven't just published the funny paper. I've got a paper

536
00:30:52,080 --> 00:30:55,120
Speaker 2: examining every one hundred year old in the world since

537
00:30:55,240 --> 00:31:00,280
Speaker 2: from nineteen fifties until now, measured by the UN done

538
00:31:00,280 --> 00:31:04,120
Speaker 2: to a categorically garbage. They are garbage. I mean, it's

539
00:31:04,200 --> 00:31:08,600
Speaker 2: really clear. Yeah, I mean, according to the UN estimates

540
00:31:08,600 --> 00:31:13,040
Speaker 2: their best estimates, the top one of the top ten

541
00:31:13,080 --> 00:31:15,880
Speaker 2: countries in the world for people reaching age one hundred

542
00:31:16,000 --> 00:31:17,760
Speaker 2: is also one of the bottom ten in the world

543
00:31:17,800 --> 00:31:18,880
Speaker 2: for average longevity.

544
00:31:19,080 --> 00:31:19,840
Speaker 1: How does that work?

545
00:31:21,120 --> 00:31:24,320
Speaker 2: Good question? No one has even asked that question at

546
00:31:24,320 --> 00:31:27,560
Speaker 2: the UN right, and it's not alone. You know that

547
00:31:27,680 --> 00:31:31,160
Speaker 2: in the top ten is Western Sahara doesn't have a government.

548
00:31:31,560 --> 00:31:33,200
Speaker 2: It's one of the ten best places in the world

549
00:31:33,200 --> 00:31:37,360
Speaker 2: for people reaching age one hundred according to the UN. Malawi,

550
00:31:37,400 --> 00:31:40,200
Speaker 2: which is, like I said, bottom ten Kenya, which is

551
00:31:40,200 --> 00:31:44,440
Speaker 2: bottom ten. Puerto Rico makes it in. Now. Puerto Rico

552
00:31:44,520 --> 00:31:50,440
Speaker 2: is a very interesting case because they had a very

553
00:31:50,760 --> 00:31:54,840
Speaker 2: long running berth certificate system. But I can buy one.

554
00:31:56,000 --> 00:31:59,920
Speaker 2: It's trivial to buy about Puerto Rican bersertificate. They won't fit,

555
00:32:00,520 --> 00:32:05,440
Speaker 2: you know, because I don't sound very Puerto Rican if

556
00:32:05,480 --> 00:32:09,880
Speaker 2: you haven't noticed. But it's around six thousand dollars. And

557
00:32:10,080 --> 00:32:13,000
Speaker 2: this got so systemically bad that in twenty ten, Puerto

558
00:32:13,080 --> 00:32:16,280
Speaker 2: Rico simply decided, look, we're giving up on birth certificates. Yes,

559
00:32:16,440 --> 00:32:19,120
Speaker 2: we're part of the richest nation on earth. Yes the

560
00:32:19,240 --> 00:32:24,160
Speaker 2: NSA is crawling up everybody's backsides through their iPhones, but

561
00:32:25,080 --> 00:32:28,520
Speaker 2: we give up and we're restarting. Now. That gives you

562
00:32:28,560 --> 00:32:31,160
Speaker 2: an idea of the systemic problems that are just being

563
00:32:31,160 --> 00:32:34,360
Speaker 2: glossed over here, because you know, when it comes to

564
00:32:34,400 --> 00:32:37,480
Speaker 2: measuring age, we only have paperwork, that's it.

565
00:32:38,040 --> 00:32:42,680
Speaker 1: Do we have any sense of who the actually actual

566
00:32:42,880 --> 00:32:46,080
Speaker 1: oldest living human has ever been? That we're firm on.

567
00:32:47,120 --> 00:32:52,480
Speaker 2: Not the foggiest not the foggiest, not the foggiest idea. Right.

568
00:32:53,200 --> 00:32:55,320
Speaker 2: I looked at the world's oldest man. Right, the world's

569
00:32:55,320 --> 00:33:00,320
Speaker 2: oldest man. He has this paper validating everything. Okay, one

570
00:33:00,360 --> 00:33:06,080
Speaker 2: of his birthdays was by admission, made up by his family. Right,

571
00:33:06,240 --> 00:33:11,400
Speaker 2: it's a problem. Number one. Number two is the people

572
00:33:11,880 --> 00:33:16,640
Speaker 2: in the scientific paper write his age down wrong and

573
00:33:16,680 --> 00:33:20,120
Speaker 2: say he's born in nineteen eighty seven, nineteen eighty seven,

574
00:33:20,920 --> 00:33:25,400
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty seven. It's not a high level of rigor

575
00:33:25,480 --> 00:33:28,640
Speaker 2: going on. Yeah, and then he gets married to the

576
00:33:28,680 --> 00:33:31,080
Speaker 2: same woman three times, apparently without being divorced.

577
00:33:31,440 --> 00:33:32,240
Speaker 1: Good for him.

578
00:33:32,520 --> 00:33:34,920
Speaker 2: Apparently he changes his name, but there's no record of

579
00:33:34,960 --> 00:33:38,840
Speaker 2: this ever happening renewed vows. Yeah. Yeah, So like the

580
00:33:38,920 --> 00:33:40,920
Speaker 2: name he's born with is different to the name he

581
00:33:41,000 --> 00:33:43,560
Speaker 2: dies with, but there's no record of that name change.

582
00:33:43,600 --> 00:33:45,760
Speaker 2: So it's like, Hey, I'm born Bob Jones and I'm

583
00:33:45,960 --> 00:33:51,760
Speaker 2: dying Tim Horton and the wreck. It's it's just astonishingly

584
00:33:51,800 --> 00:33:55,760
Speaker 2: for the holes, but nobody. Nobody cares because it's a

585
00:33:55,800 --> 00:33:59,600
Speaker 2: story about a sweet old man reaching in an astonishing age.

586
00:34:00,040 --> 00:34:00,720
Speaker 2: One cares.

587
00:34:00,960 --> 00:34:03,800
Speaker 1: I've seen this television show it's called mad Men, Right,

588
00:34:03,840 --> 00:34:08,840
Speaker 1: It's like he enters the war as Dick Whitman. Dondreper dies,

589
00:34:08,880 --> 00:34:11,399
Speaker 1: so he takes his identity and that explains it all.

590
00:34:11,880 --> 00:34:17,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well, it's surprisingly easy to commit pension from

591
00:34:17,000 --> 00:34:20,600
Speaker 2: I'm not advocating anything here, but one of the few

592
00:34:20,640 --> 00:34:23,439
Speaker 2: people I have sympathy for in this story is there's

593
00:34:23,480 --> 00:34:26,960
Speaker 2: a bunch of cheeky old people out there who their

594
00:34:27,000 --> 00:34:29,040
Speaker 2: mom or dad dies and they just don't tell anyone,

595
00:34:29,840 --> 00:34:32,640
Speaker 2: right Like, the Greeks and towns are fantastic at this.

596
00:34:32,680 --> 00:34:36,919
Speaker 2: They're just like, don't ask any don't ask me. He's fine,

597
00:34:36,960 --> 00:34:40,799
Speaker 2: He's just on holidays in Gifuod Prefecture, right Like. It's

598
00:34:40,840 --> 00:34:46,319
Speaker 2: sort of there's this fantastic process and if you just

599
00:34:46,440 --> 00:34:50,240
Speaker 2: don't tell anybody, it's not like there's a giant machine

600
00:34:50,280 --> 00:34:52,680
Speaker 2: in the government that goes you know, there's not a

601
00:34:52,719 --> 00:34:57,279
Speaker 2: death radar that tells you this guy's dead. So it

602
00:34:57,440 --> 00:35:00,840
Speaker 2: just keeps sending the pension check every month, and it

603
00:35:00,880 --> 00:35:01,759
Speaker 2: happens all the time.

604
00:35:02,520 --> 00:35:06,439
Speaker 1: So so amazing. I mean, I think at an individual level,

605
00:35:06,600 --> 00:35:08,560
Speaker 1: I can be like, wow, these are some creative people.

606
00:35:08,600 --> 00:35:14,040
Speaker 1: I kind of admire their wit and cunningness. At a

607
00:35:14,080 --> 00:35:16,520
Speaker 1: big population level, I go, that's probably not a good

608
00:35:16,520 --> 00:35:17,840
Speaker 1: thing for that to happen too often.

609
00:35:18,160 --> 00:35:21,759
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's right. I mean, at an individual level,

610
00:35:21,760 --> 00:35:25,279
Speaker 2: these people kind of lovely, like the Aggie Fenton used

611
00:35:25,280 --> 00:35:27,200
Speaker 2: to get people to buy a drinks because you just

612
00:35:27,280 --> 00:35:28,560
Speaker 2: go to the local pub and be like, I'm the

613
00:35:28,560 --> 00:35:30,319
Speaker 2: oldest woman in the world, give me, gim me ape

614
00:35:30,320 --> 00:35:30,600
Speaker 2: and be it.

615
00:35:31,440 --> 00:35:33,960
Speaker 1: That's awesome. We'll take a quick break and then we'll

616
00:35:33,960 --> 00:35:37,560
Speaker 1: ask Saul why Silicon Valley is so obsessed with longevity

617
00:35:37,880 --> 00:35:47,799
Speaker 1: and whether any of it is legit. All right, so

618
00:35:49,000 --> 00:35:51,320
Speaker 1: we talked about some of the money that Blue Zones

619
00:35:51,360 --> 00:35:55,120
Speaker 1: has generated seventy five million on the deal, and then

620
00:35:55,160 --> 00:35:57,600
Speaker 1: whatever all the books and all that. I mean, I

621
00:35:57,640 --> 00:35:59,479
Speaker 1: was when I was in Costa Rica, there was Blue

622
00:35:59,520 --> 00:36:02,719
Speaker 1: Zone sweat all over the airport. I'll say that. But

623
00:36:02,800 --> 00:36:06,600
Speaker 1: I feel like the new, much more moneyed version of

624
00:36:06,640 --> 00:36:09,319
Speaker 1: blue Zones is sort of happening in Silicon Valley with

625
00:36:09,640 --> 00:36:13,240
Speaker 1: this tech e longevity movement, which you wrote in the book.

626
00:36:13,360 --> 00:36:16,040
Speaker 1: Wrote about in the book. What's your take on all

627
00:36:16,080 --> 00:36:17,040
Speaker 1: of that happening there?

628
00:36:18,880 --> 00:36:24,320
Speaker 2: It's very simple. The if you're a grifter with creativity,

629
00:36:25,040 --> 00:36:30,640
Speaker 2: who better the target? Right? Who better? They've bought everything

630
00:36:30,640 --> 00:36:34,320
Speaker 2: else there's only one thing left, and that's this illusion

631
00:36:34,360 --> 00:36:37,919
Speaker 2: that they're going to live forever. So you have these

632
00:36:37,920 --> 00:36:42,640
Speaker 2: incredibly sophisticated grifts going on, and the best thing is

633
00:36:42,680 --> 00:36:46,520
Speaker 2: they don't have to be any different than any historical grifts.

634
00:36:46,920 --> 00:36:48,879
Speaker 2: You can just say, you know, I've got the tech

635
00:36:48,920 --> 00:36:52,400
Speaker 2: based secret to living forever. You could take something that

636
00:36:52,520 --> 00:36:56,239
Speaker 2: was sold to Emperor chinshi Wan, the first emperor of China.

637
00:36:56,280 --> 00:36:57,719
Speaker 2: You could sell it to these guys and they would

638
00:36:57,719 --> 00:37:01,520
Speaker 2: believe you one of the king. You know, sort of

639
00:37:01,880 --> 00:37:05,759
Speaker 2: processes I talk about is this idea of transferring young

640
00:37:05,800 --> 00:37:08,440
Speaker 2: blood into yourself. That's a way to live forever. Now

641
00:37:08,440 --> 00:37:13,480
Speaker 2: that's not a new idea. Dracula is a popular old book,

642
00:37:15,400 --> 00:37:20,040
Speaker 2: but it's also transparently. Obviously it doesn't work, and it

643
00:37:20,080 --> 00:37:24,280
Speaker 2: has not prevented the sales. It hasn't prevented the sales pictures,

644
00:37:24,320 --> 00:37:28,359
Speaker 2: It hasn't prevented this sort of the startup approach of

645
00:37:28,640 --> 00:37:31,240
Speaker 2: why you just slapped a couple of leaders of children's

646
00:37:31,239 --> 00:37:35,560
Speaker 2: blood into you, and of course the results are horrific.

647
00:37:36,480 --> 00:37:38,360
Speaker 2: You know, where do you get children's blood? Is one

648
00:37:38,400 --> 00:37:40,400
Speaker 2: of the things I deal with in the book. And

649
00:37:40,440 --> 00:37:45,200
Speaker 2: the solution is not great. But I also talk about

650
00:37:45,239 --> 00:37:49,560
Speaker 2: the fact that blood don't is a young recipients of

651
00:37:49,560 --> 00:37:53,120
Speaker 2: blood donations are old. It already happens, like the logic

652
00:37:53,239 --> 00:37:55,160
Speaker 2: just is not there. This is one of the most common,

653
00:37:55,640 --> 00:37:59,040
Speaker 2: if not the most common medical procedure in the world,

654
00:37:59,120 --> 00:38:00,920
Speaker 2: to give a blood transfer usion. It doesn't make your

655
00:38:00,960 --> 00:38:06,960
Speaker 2: age backwards. But you have this ecosystem of people selling

656
00:38:07,120 --> 00:38:12,000
Speaker 2: anything they can to billionaires on any basis, and this

657
00:38:12,080 --> 00:38:15,399
Speaker 2: has fallen into this this ecosystem. There are plenty of others.

658
00:38:15,440 --> 00:38:18,799
Speaker 2: There's plenty of magic pills floating around Silicon Valley, none

659
00:38:18,800 --> 00:38:24,400
Speaker 2: of which work. But it is creating an extraordinary problem

660
00:38:25,200 --> 00:38:27,520
Speaker 2: because to be able to do this, you have to

661
00:38:27,520 --> 00:38:30,800
Speaker 2: throw out the evidence base of medicine. You have to

662
00:38:30,840 --> 00:38:35,279
Speaker 2: be able to ignore the hippocratic earth. And there is

663
00:38:35,320 --> 00:38:39,040
Speaker 2: now a concerted push to do that, and it's it's

664
00:38:39,160 --> 00:38:39,920
Speaker 2: highly effective.

665
00:38:40,520 --> 00:38:44,160
Speaker 1: I went to this, This was a sort of work

666
00:38:44,400 --> 00:38:48,560
Speaker 1: reporting task. I went to a longevity conference in Las Vegas,

667
00:38:49,400 --> 00:38:52,400
Speaker 1: and you know, tons of people, they are super interested

668
00:38:52,440 --> 00:38:54,960
Speaker 1: in longevity. There's all these booths with all these different

669
00:38:55,000 --> 00:39:00,200
Speaker 1: supplements and procedures and X y Z and one of

670
00:39:00,239 --> 00:39:03,799
Speaker 1: my friends, funny clever friends text me afterwards, and he goes,

671
00:39:03,840 --> 00:39:05,640
Speaker 1: did you see anyone over that looked over one hundred

672
00:39:05,680 --> 00:39:09,920
Speaker 1: years old? I go, no, I did not. I did

673
00:39:09,960 --> 00:39:12,759
Speaker 1: see a lot of old people at the casino. They

674
00:39:12,760 --> 00:39:14,560
Speaker 1: were playing slot machines, and they looked like they were

675
00:39:14,560 --> 00:39:16,640
Speaker 1: having a lot more fun. I'll tell you that much.

676
00:39:17,880 --> 00:39:20,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean old people at the casino is probably

677
00:39:20,520 --> 00:39:24,880
Speaker 2: the right metaphor to go with here, except the payoff

678
00:39:24,880 --> 00:39:28,400
Speaker 2: as zero percent. Right, I make this point. I'm going

679
00:39:28,480 --> 00:39:31,160
Speaker 2: to make it as well as I can. Now. Once

680
00:39:31,200 --> 00:39:33,399
Speaker 2: you're at age forty, the odds of dying double every

681
00:39:33,440 --> 00:39:37,440
Speaker 2: eight years. Just like clockwork, every seven or eight years,

682
00:39:37,520 --> 00:39:40,880
Speaker 2: your odds of dying double until you did. Now, a

683
00:39:40,960 --> 00:39:44,000
Speaker 2: lot of people get upset about that, understandably, but that's life.

684
00:39:46,080 --> 00:39:48,319
Speaker 2: There are a heap of people now claiming, especially in

685
00:39:48,320 --> 00:39:51,040
Speaker 2: that space, that they can reduce biological age. And let's

686
00:39:51,040 --> 00:39:53,160
Speaker 2: say they claim all the time, I can reduce your

687
00:39:53,200 --> 00:39:55,560
Speaker 2: biological page by ten years. Now, let's think about what

688
00:39:55,600 --> 00:39:59,399
Speaker 2: would happen if that was true. Every disease that gets

689
00:39:59,440 --> 00:40:05,120
Speaker 2: worse with that age would drop, right, it wouldn't just drop,

690
00:40:05,280 --> 00:40:07,640
Speaker 2: It would more than half your risk of dying from

691
00:40:07,640 --> 00:40:10,360
Speaker 2: a heart disease. More than half risk of dying from cancer,

692
00:40:10,400 --> 00:40:14,040
Speaker 2: more than half. You could run a clinical trial on

693
00:40:14,120 --> 00:40:16,600
Speaker 2: any one of these diseases and be one of the

694
00:40:16,680 --> 00:40:19,360
Speaker 2: world's richest people because you could do it again and

695
00:40:19,400 --> 00:40:22,480
Speaker 2: again and again. So, if you could reduce my biological

696
00:40:22,520 --> 00:40:26,280
Speaker 2: age by ten years, like really, actually do it, why

697
00:40:26,320 --> 00:40:31,360
Speaker 2: are you selling it in a booth in Las Vegas? Right?

698
00:40:32,160 --> 00:40:34,600
Speaker 2: Why are you not collecting hundreds of billions of dollars

699
00:40:34,600 --> 00:40:39,000
Speaker 2: from merk, collecting your Nobil prizes and going home. Because

700
00:40:39,000 --> 00:40:42,840
Speaker 2: it's not just the diseases that kill you. Every disease

701
00:40:42,840 --> 00:40:46,560
Speaker 2: that gets worth worse with age, bolding, a rectile dysfunction,

702
00:40:47,239 --> 00:40:50,960
Speaker 2: you know, whatever it is, whatever insanely profitable thing it is,

703
00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:53,640
Speaker 2: If you can reduce that by ten years, biologically you're

704
00:40:53,640 --> 00:40:57,960
Speaker 2: more than halved to the rate. So why are you

705
00:40:58,080 --> 00:41:03,240
Speaker 2: pitching to me on Twitter? Right? The answer is because

706
00:41:03,280 --> 00:41:08,040
Speaker 2: none of this stuff works, none of it. It's you're

707
00:41:08,120 --> 00:41:12,279
Speaker 2: selling a skinny dipping less tripped to Ponstilion's family Youth.

708
00:41:13,200 --> 00:41:13,440
Speaker 2: You know.

709
00:41:14,040 --> 00:41:16,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny because I talked to a few of

710
00:41:17,000 --> 00:41:18,880
Speaker 1: the people who were running the boost and you know,

711
00:41:19,000 --> 00:41:22,120
Speaker 1: own these companies, and more than one kind of looked

712
00:41:22,120 --> 00:41:26,080
Speaker 1: around and said, you know, like ninety five percent of

713
00:41:26,080 --> 00:41:28,439
Speaker 1: the shit at this conference it doesn't work at all,

714
00:41:29,200 --> 00:41:32,359
Speaker 1: but mine works. Well, yeah, yeah, we do the math here.

715
00:41:32,400 --> 00:41:33,759
Speaker 1: How many people told me that I don't know if

716
00:41:33,760 --> 00:41:34,560
Speaker 1: that math maths.

717
00:41:35,640 --> 00:41:38,239
Speaker 2: There was a I had a beautiful study by a

718
00:41:38,320 --> 00:41:40,759
Speaker 2: lady who went to Sudinia and talked to one of

719
00:41:40,800 --> 00:41:43,080
Speaker 2: the hundred year olds and they said exactly the same thing.

720
00:41:43,480 --> 00:41:46,319
Speaker 2: They said, my birth certificate is real, but that lady

721
00:41:46,400 --> 00:41:49,000
Speaker 2: up the road like she's making it up.

722
00:41:51,280 --> 00:41:55,040
Speaker 1: So for the people listening to this, who go, I

723
00:41:55,120 --> 00:41:57,279
Speaker 1: kind of hate you because I've been eating beans the

724
00:41:57,320 --> 00:41:59,479
Speaker 1: last eight years because I was told that it would

725
00:41:59,480 --> 00:42:03,560
Speaker 1: help me live longer, and I hate beans. What do

726
00:42:03,600 --> 00:42:07,719
Speaker 1: you feel most firm about in terms of things we

727
00:42:07,719 --> 00:42:11,640
Speaker 1: can do to live longer? And then a sort of

728
00:42:11,719 --> 00:42:15,279
Speaker 1: underlying question is with these practices, are we lengthening our

729
00:42:15,320 --> 00:42:17,960
Speaker 1: lives or are we just not dying as early? How

730
00:42:17,960 --> 00:42:18,440
Speaker 1: do you think it is?

731
00:42:18,480 --> 00:42:21,719
Speaker 2: Not that the point of medicine is to make you

732
00:42:21,800 --> 00:42:23,680
Speaker 2: live a longer and healthier life. So if you want

733
00:42:23,719 --> 00:42:26,160
Speaker 2: a longer, healthier life, good talk to your doctor. That's it.

734
00:42:26,680 --> 00:42:29,640
Speaker 2: Not some not some cookbook salesman on YouTube, go and

735
00:42:29,640 --> 00:42:33,200
Speaker 2: talk to your doctor. If you can't afford a doctor,

736
00:42:33,239 --> 00:42:35,600
Speaker 2: if you're in that unfortunate position, then the best thing

737
00:42:35,640 --> 00:42:40,080
Speaker 2: you can do exercise, don't drink, don't smoke, Like I

738
00:42:40,160 --> 00:42:42,960
Speaker 2: know you want to have a beer after work, but

739
00:42:43,080 --> 00:42:46,799
Speaker 2: like that is the stuff that works. Now you can

740
00:42:46,800 --> 00:42:48,759
Speaker 2: add some niche stuff like you know, obviously don't do

741
00:42:48,840 --> 00:42:54,359
Speaker 2: crack cocaine underneath the Loma Lindow Overpass. But really we

742
00:42:54,480 --> 00:42:58,360
Speaker 2: already know what you have to do, and it's very simple.

743
00:42:59,400 --> 00:43:03,839
Speaker 2: It is free. Yeah, except in America for the doctors.

744
00:43:04,320 --> 00:43:08,719
Speaker 1: Except in America for the doctors. Exactly how has all

745
00:43:08,760 --> 00:43:14,040
Speaker 1: this work you've been doing changed your own habits thinking

746
00:43:15,040 --> 00:43:15,480
Speaker 1: in life?

747
00:43:16,080 --> 00:43:20,080
Speaker 2: It hasn't changed my habits much. You know, in terms

748
00:43:20,120 --> 00:43:23,920
Speaker 2: of being a sole custody data to kids. This is

749
00:43:23,960 --> 00:43:28,120
Speaker 2: as physically first you could be right, it's not. You

750
00:43:28,160 --> 00:43:31,160
Speaker 2: sort of do the best you can. But in terms

751
00:43:31,160 --> 00:43:33,400
Speaker 2: of changing my life, you know, as increasing amount of

752
00:43:33,440 --> 00:43:38,120
Speaker 2: hate mail. But also it's been extraordinary the degree to

753
00:43:38,200 --> 00:43:42,239
Speaker 2: which other professional demographers can just be bought, I mean,

754
00:43:42,320 --> 00:43:47,839
Speaker 2: really just be bort I mean we have now a

755
00:43:47,920 --> 00:43:52,320
Speaker 2: Blue Zones research institute. Despite the fact that Loma Linda

756
00:43:52,600 --> 00:43:58,680
Speaker 2: was on the drive to Vegas discovered from the freeway.

757
00:44:00,120 --> 00:44:01,840
Speaker 2: We now have some of the top demographers in the

758
00:44:01,880 --> 00:44:04,239
Speaker 2: world just saying I'll take the money and I'll come

759
00:44:04,239 --> 00:44:07,239
Speaker 2: and join you. Where is the actual basis of this

760
00:44:07,280 --> 00:44:09,920
Speaker 2: is highly questionable. It's coming up. It's sort of in

761
00:44:10,000 --> 00:44:13,120
Speaker 2: development at the moment. But I'm seeing the papers coming

762
00:44:13,200 --> 00:44:16,640
Speaker 2: through that are trying to They're trying to reconcile a

763
00:44:16,680 --> 00:44:20,560
Speaker 2: reputation of this idea without ever explaining why. For twenty

764
00:44:20,680 --> 00:44:24,200
Speaker 2: years an idea with no basis in fact was taken

765
00:44:24,239 --> 00:44:29,280
Speaker 2: seriously by the scientific community. So, you know, I talked

766
00:44:29,320 --> 00:44:34,000
Speaker 2: briefly about the demographer from Costa Rica who was paid

767
00:44:34,000 --> 00:44:36,040
Speaker 2: to fined at Blue Zone fines went in Costa Rica.

768
00:44:36,120 --> 00:44:41,920
Speaker 2: But this is the format. Mister Buttiner has no expertise

769
00:44:42,000 --> 00:44:46,399
Speaker 2: to speak of whatsoever, and seems to be very successful

770
00:44:46,719 --> 00:44:50,360
Speaker 2: at simply saying I'll pay a consultancy to people who

771
00:44:50,400 --> 00:44:54,720
Speaker 2: do have expertise, and they'll say things that curiously align

772
00:44:54,760 --> 00:44:56,720
Speaker 2: with exactly what the marketing hype says.

773
00:44:57,719 --> 00:44:58,800
Speaker 1: What do you think the fectsos?

774
00:45:00,080 --> 00:45:03,440
Speaker 2: If I knew, I would do it, you know, if

775
00:45:03,800 --> 00:45:08,680
Speaker 2: I had an easy answer. But I think the thing

776
00:45:08,719 --> 00:45:13,800
Speaker 2: we really need to focus on is that medicine was messy.

777
00:45:14,000 --> 00:45:16,560
Speaker 2: The history of medicine is brutal, and it got us

778
00:45:16,560 --> 00:45:19,440
Speaker 2: to a point where we have guardrails, we have safety.

779
00:45:20,400 --> 00:45:23,040
Speaker 2: We cannot just throw that away because people at the

780
00:45:23,040 --> 00:45:26,640
Speaker 2: top of government or people in a marketing company don't

781
00:45:27,000 --> 00:45:33,120
Speaker 2: like the burden of evidence anymore. And as a scientific community,

782
00:45:33,200 --> 00:45:35,799
Speaker 2: I think we need to really kick the charlatans out,

783
00:45:35,880 --> 00:45:38,760
Speaker 2: Like it's obvious to everybody who needs to be fired,

784
00:45:38,760 --> 00:45:41,440
Speaker 2: who needs to be removed? You know, you can't have

785
00:45:42,480 --> 00:45:44,640
Speaker 2: one of these people has tenure at one of the

786
00:45:44,680 --> 00:45:47,280
Speaker 2: best universities on earth and has sunk eight billion dollars

787
00:45:47,280 --> 00:45:52,160
Speaker 2: of other people's money into what are effectively supplements sold

788
00:45:52,160 --> 00:45:54,560
Speaker 2: out of Vegas, And why is that person still in

789
00:45:54,560 --> 00:45:56,920
Speaker 2: the job. We need to ask serious questions about, like

790
00:45:57,040 --> 00:46:01,320
Speaker 2: why why are we putting up with this removing For example,

791
00:46:01,360 --> 00:46:04,840
Speaker 2: doctor oz Is won the BIGGESUS Awards, which is an

792
00:46:04,920 --> 00:46:08,359
Speaker 2: award for claiming things that will be true when peaks fly.

793
00:46:09,280 --> 00:46:12,280
Speaker 2: He's won it multiple times. Yet the amount of blood

794
00:46:12,400 --> 00:46:14,480
Speaker 2: it took to get him off one of I think

795
00:46:14,520 --> 00:46:16,600
Speaker 2: it was the University of Chicago, I can't remember exactly

796
00:46:16,680 --> 00:46:19,320
Speaker 2: it took him to get him off a medical board

797
00:46:19,480 --> 00:46:22,239
Speaker 2: in a major university is extraordinary. He should have been

798
00:46:22,280 --> 00:46:26,759
Speaker 2: sacked day one, day one, and yet we put up

799
00:46:26,840 --> 00:46:30,399
Speaker 2: with We put up with the quackery. I just don't

800
00:46:30,480 --> 00:46:31,160
Speaker 2: understand why.

801
00:46:31,480 --> 00:46:34,560
Speaker 1: Well, I think one thing that as positive as the

802
00:46:34,600 --> 00:46:37,480
Speaker 1: fact that you and I are having this conversation, your

803
00:46:37,520 --> 00:46:41,319
Speaker 1: work is resonating. And I think once you get enough

804
00:46:41,360 --> 00:46:44,600
Speaker 1: public pushback, things start, People at least start to be

805
00:46:44,640 --> 00:46:47,160
Speaker 1: a little more on guard and they start to go, okay,

806
00:46:47,160 --> 00:46:50,360
Speaker 1: should we you know, what are the holes here? And

807
00:46:50,440 --> 00:46:51,920
Speaker 1: it might be a slow process. I don't know, it

808
00:46:52,000 --> 00:46:54,400
Speaker 1: might be fast processed. Sometimes things it's like you have

809
00:46:54,440 --> 00:46:56,279
Speaker 1: a moment, kind of like when your paper came out

810
00:46:56,320 --> 00:46:58,800
Speaker 1: and everyone goes, oh shit, we gotta we got to

811
00:46:58,800 --> 00:47:00,960
Speaker 1: get our act together. But I don't know.

812
00:47:02,760 --> 00:47:08,520
Speaker 2: Well, I think the heartening part of this is the public,

813
00:47:09,120 --> 00:47:11,440
Speaker 2: even when they're being tricked, they sort of have this

814
00:47:11,560 --> 00:47:14,200
Speaker 2: feeling they're being tricked. You know, they're smarter than we have,

815
00:47:14,200 --> 00:47:18,640
Speaker 2: a smarter than we give them credit for. Right at least,

816
00:47:18,840 --> 00:47:21,600
Speaker 2: I agree. I know that the public is very smart

817
00:47:21,600 --> 00:47:23,759
Speaker 2: at figuring out once I've been shown something as a trick,

818
00:47:23,840 --> 00:47:26,360
Speaker 2: like they know. If you ever doubt this, go to

819
00:47:27,520 --> 00:47:31,000
Speaker 2: a Reddit sub thread on something like a magician's show, right,

820
00:47:31,000 --> 00:47:34,240
Speaker 2: they figure it out, even when they're intentionally being tricked,

821
00:47:34,239 --> 00:47:38,480
Speaker 2: they figure it out. And I think that's sort of wonderful.

822
00:47:39,160 --> 00:47:42,560
Speaker 2: We just need the equivalent of Penninella up the front

823
00:47:42,640 --> 00:47:47,239
Speaker 2: saying this is how the trick is done, and the

824
00:47:47,239 --> 00:47:49,480
Speaker 2: public could very quickly latch onto that. So that's the

825
00:47:50,200 --> 00:47:52,920
Speaker 2: that's a really positive note coming out of this. You know,

826
00:47:52,960 --> 00:47:55,240
Speaker 2: you ask me for my health advice, but the public

827
00:47:55,320 --> 00:47:58,960
Speaker 2: know my health advice. They know it themselves already. They

828
00:47:59,000 --> 00:48:04,279
Speaker 2: know that America, honestly, you need free healthcare. You just

829
00:48:04,320 --> 00:48:07,000
Speaker 2: need it. It's something that is constantly there in the

830
00:48:07,040 --> 00:48:09,520
Speaker 2: back of everyone's mind that there's something sort of deeply

831
00:48:09,560 --> 00:48:14,960
Speaker 2: wrong with this system. And the more we're very explicit

832
00:48:15,000 --> 00:48:18,160
Speaker 2: about that and explicit about the fact that people understand

833
00:48:18,200 --> 00:48:20,680
Speaker 2: this problem, the more hopeful I am that it will

834
00:48:20,680 --> 00:48:21,160
Speaker 2: get fixed.

835
00:48:22,000 --> 00:48:27,680
Speaker 1: How was your work made you think about death? I'm

836
00:48:27,719 --> 00:48:31,719
Speaker 1: fine with it, honestly, great answer.

837
00:48:32,080 --> 00:48:36,680
Speaker 2: Like, is eighty years not enough? It's great to have

838
00:48:36,760 --> 00:48:40,680
Speaker 2: eighty years. You know, if you if you go back

839
00:48:40,719 --> 00:48:44,920
Speaker 2: to the past, the past is terrible past. It is like, like,

840
00:48:44,960 --> 00:48:47,080
Speaker 2: even if you have eighty years in the past, is

841
00:48:48,360 --> 00:48:50,680
Speaker 2: you know, people, the people, especially the right wings think

842
00:48:50,680 --> 00:48:53,319
Speaker 2: to love to harp on about Rome being this sort

843
00:48:53,360 --> 00:48:56,080
Speaker 2: of you know, tough and manly place where you go

844
00:48:56,120 --> 00:48:58,120
Speaker 2: around and be tough and find battles and stuff like,

845
00:48:58,840 --> 00:49:02,239
Speaker 2: you want to know something about them. The public bathrooms

846
00:49:02,239 --> 00:49:05,680
Speaker 2: had a shared sponge that's the toilet paper, right, So

847
00:49:05,800 --> 00:49:07,920
Speaker 2: you're going back and even if you're at the elite

848
00:49:07,960 --> 00:49:14,239
Speaker 2: tier of the past, it's terrible. It's terrible. So you know,

849
00:49:14,480 --> 00:49:19,200
Speaker 2: eighty years now is fantastic. It's fantastic. So just enjoy it.

850
00:49:19,320 --> 00:49:22,279
Speaker 1: Just have a good time, right, Yeah, your probability of

851
00:49:22,320 --> 00:49:26,279
Speaker 1: reaching eighty years has never been higher and never been high.

852
00:49:26,360 --> 00:49:29,080
Speaker 1: Those eighty years are going to be an all likelihood,

853
00:49:29,320 --> 00:49:31,399
Speaker 1: way better than they would have been had you met

854
00:49:31,480 --> 00:49:35,560
Speaker 1: him one hundred years ago, three hundred years ago, two

855
00:49:35,560 --> 00:49:37,000
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, whatever it might be.

856
00:49:37,719 --> 00:49:41,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, so much better. I mean it again, the history

857
00:49:41,680 --> 00:49:43,360
Speaker 2: of medicine sort of puts a different spin on this.

858
00:49:43,480 --> 00:49:46,280
Speaker 2: But you look at what people died of in the past,

859
00:49:46,520 --> 00:49:48,400
Speaker 2: and you look at how long they got and you

860
00:49:48,480 --> 00:49:51,560
Speaker 2: just think, Okay, no, we've we've lost that perspective and

861
00:49:51,600 --> 00:49:56,239
Speaker 2: we've lost that feeling of joy in existing. To some

862
00:49:56,400 --> 00:49:59,359
Speaker 2: extent because that constant threat of death is not there.

863
00:49:59,400 --> 00:50:01,640
Speaker 2: It's great that constant threat of death is not there.

864
00:50:01,719 --> 00:50:05,880
Speaker 2: But we don't need to sit around like anxiously panicking

865
00:50:05,920 --> 00:50:07,120
Speaker 2: that we're not going to make it to one hundred

866
00:50:07,120 --> 00:50:09,000
Speaker 2: and five. I think it's fine. It's fine to not

867
00:50:09,000 --> 00:50:10,080
Speaker 2: make it to one hundred and five.

868
00:50:11,960 --> 00:50:13,600
Speaker 1: That feels like a good note to end on. It

869
00:50:13,680 --> 00:50:16,200
Speaker 1: is fine not to make it two hundred and five. Well, Saul,

870
00:50:16,440 --> 00:50:18,160
Speaker 1: I appreciate you coming on the show man. Your book

871
00:50:18,200 --> 00:50:20,560
Speaker 1: is fantastic. I recommend it to everyone listening right now.

872
00:50:20,800 --> 00:50:22,400
Speaker 2: Thank you very much. It's been a real pleasure.

873
00:50:23,960 --> 00:50:25,680
Speaker 1: Thank you for checking out the episode, and thanks to

874
00:50:25,800 --> 00:50:29,160
Speaker 1: Saul for jumping on and chatting with us. We are

875
00:50:29,160 --> 00:50:31,640
Speaker 1: in your feeds twice a week, so please keep an

876
00:50:31,640 --> 00:50:33,640
Speaker 1: eye out for more. If you have a question for

877
00:50:33,680 --> 00:50:36,239
Speaker 1: our Ask Michael Anything section, please submit it in the

878
00:50:36,239 --> 00:50:40,040
Speaker 1: comments or send it to media at twopct dot com.

879
00:50:40,360 --> 00:50:42,239
Speaker 1: Even better, if you want to send us your question

880
00:50:42,280 --> 00:50:44,560
Speaker 1: as a voice memo or a video, we would love

881
00:50:44,600 --> 00:50:46,279
Speaker 1: to run that and answer it. We will try and

882
00:50:46,320 --> 00:50:50,120
Speaker 1: answer as many as we can. Of course, please subscribe

883
00:50:50,160 --> 00:50:53,400
Speaker 1: to the show really helps, and in closing, have fun

884
00:50:53,840 --> 00:50:57,240
Speaker 1: don't die, and if you do die, pretend you're alive

885
00:50:57,400 --> 00:51:04,520
Speaker 1: and keep collecting those social security benefits.

886
00:51:06,640 --> 00:51:07,200
Speaker 2: Classic