WEBVTT - Blue Zones Debunked: The Longevity Con That's Fooled Millions 0:00:00.920 --> 0:00:03.480 Welcome to two percent. I'm your host, Michael Lieser. So 0:00:03.560 --> 0:00:06.240 there is a lot of focus on longevity right now. 0:00:06.360 --> 0:00:08.520 Everybody wants to live longer, and if you were at 0:00:08.600 --> 0:00:12.280 all interested in longevity, you have probably heard of the 0:00:12.280 --> 0:00:15.400 Blue zones. These are places on Earth where people live 0:00:15.720 --> 0:00:19.360 well past one hundred years of age. There are Netflix 0:00:19.400 --> 0:00:21.680 series about the Blue Zones, there are books about the 0:00:21.760 --> 0:00:24.800 Blue zones, and these things all tell us exactly what 0:00:24.840 --> 0:00:26.840 we can do to live like people in the Blue 0:00:26.920 --> 0:00:31.120 zones and in theory reach past age one hundred. But 0:00:31.160 --> 0:00:33.919 there's a little problem, well a very big problem, and 0:00:33.960 --> 0:00:36.159 that's that the Blue zones might be one of the 0:00:36.440 --> 0:00:40.200 longest cons in history. That is what my guest today 0:00:40.240 --> 0:00:43.760 concluded after he dove deeply into the data and found 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:48.160 a lot of critical airs. I'm talking to Saul Justin Newman. 0:00:48.600 --> 0:00:52.400 He studies population aging at Oxford and he is also 0:00:52.560 --> 0:00:55.600 a researcher at University College London, and he's got a 0:00:55.640 --> 0:00:59.640 new book it's called Morbid Debunking Modern Longevity Science. So 0:00:59.640 --> 0:01:01.760 he's going to talk to us about what he found 0:01:01.800 --> 0:01:03.760 about the Blue zones and what it can tell us 0:01:03.880 --> 0:01:18.679 about the new science of longevity. Saul Justin Newman, thanks 0:01:18.680 --> 0:01:19.480 for coming on the show. 0:01:19.920 --> 0:01:21.280 Thank you very much for having me. 0:01:21.640 --> 0:01:23.200 All Right, here's where I want to start with something 0:01:23.319 --> 0:01:25.360 very basic. What are the blue zones? 0:01:25.760 --> 0:01:29.080 Blue zones were supposed to be regions of the world 0:01:29.120 --> 0:01:32.840 where people attained remarkable ages at remarkable rates, and they 0:01:32.920 --> 0:01:35.240 usually did. The remarkable age is age one hundred. 0:01:35.800 --> 0:01:38.479 And how did they start? How did this idea even began? 0:01:39.440 --> 0:01:41.560 I think the idea is how it began as a 0:01:41.600 --> 0:01:44.600 bit of a mystery, because the process was to go 0:01:44.680 --> 0:01:48.040 to an island of a European country, which is Sardinia, 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:51.120 and say, people here may live a very long time. 0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:55.960 Let's check now why that particular island was chosen as 0:01:55.960 --> 0:01:59.360 a bit obscure, but the basic idea was someone ran 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:03.320 a small stuff. They decided that this region of a 0:02:03.400 --> 0:02:06.120 very poor part of Italy was living an extremely long time, 0:02:06.200 --> 0:02:09.520 and they called it a blue zone. Amusingly, they also 0:02:09.800 --> 0:02:12.919 jumped straight to the conclusion of why people were living 0:02:12.960 --> 0:02:16.200 a long time in this area, And I love this 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:18.680 because it hasn't made it into the lifestyle advice. But 0:02:18.760 --> 0:02:23.720 the original conclusion was because of all the incest. Of 0:02:23.760 --> 0:02:29.400 all the incest, Yeah, the person who had done this 0:02:29.440 --> 0:02:33.880 had gone to this island and decided that incest was 0:02:33.880 --> 0:02:36.760 causing extreme longevity in these little mountain towns. 0:02:37.320 --> 0:02:39.440 I did not hear about that when I went to 0:02:39.440 --> 0:02:41.840 the Blue Zone's website. I think that was told to 0:02:41.880 --> 0:02:43.320 eat sardines or something instead. 0:02:43.480 --> 0:02:46.040 Yeah, a little bit by design, I suspect. 0:02:46.680 --> 0:02:50.200 So then it expands, So it starts in Sardinia, and 0:02:50.240 --> 0:02:53.880 then they start tacking on places that are considered blue zones. 0:02:53.880 --> 0:02:54.840 How did that play out? 0:02:55.440 --> 0:02:58.720 It played out effectively as a sort of magazine article, 0:02:58.840 --> 0:03:02.640 not as a scientific process. We had a gentleman arrive 0:03:02.800 --> 0:03:05.680 from out of the blue and he picked up this 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:09.400 idea of regions where people live forever, and he wrote 0:03:09.400 --> 0:03:13.440 an article, this is the third most popular article in 0:03:13.560 --> 0:03:17.840 National Geographic of all time, about these three regions where 0:03:17.840 --> 0:03:21.440 people supposedly lived past one hundred. One is in California 0:03:21.480 --> 0:03:24.600 in Low Melinda, one is in Okinawa, and the other 0:03:24.720 --> 0:03:28.040 is this Sardinian blue zone. And the idea was that 0:03:28.360 --> 0:03:32.239 if you do as the Romans do effectively and behave 0:03:32.320 --> 0:03:35.800 like they're doing these three very very different places, you 0:03:36.040 --> 0:03:38.000 too could live past age one hundred. It's a very 0:03:38.040 --> 0:03:43.720 alluring idea, and it launched a sort of lifestyle chain 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:47.960 of products, starting with cookbooks and moving on to absolutely 0:03:48.000 --> 0:03:51.280 everything under the sun. I think they even have a cologne. 0:03:50.720 --> 0:03:56.200 Now nice and then so it has they identify these 0:03:56.240 --> 0:03:59.000 three places, and then they start adding on places. Right, 0:03:59.040 --> 0:04:03.840 there's like coast, different places. But the idea is typically 0:04:03.880 --> 0:04:07.680 they will identify something these people do, these people who 0:04:07.720 --> 0:04:10.920 are supposedly long living, and therefore that is kind of 0:04:10.920 --> 0:04:13.080 the key to living longer for you as well. 0:04:13.440 --> 0:04:15.760 Yeah, I mean there's a central claim that people in 0:04:15.800 --> 0:04:18.880 these places live very, very long times, and then there's 0:04:18.880 --> 0:04:22.800 these subsidiary claims that we've figured out why this happens, 0:04:22.920 --> 0:04:25.640 and there are these nine sets of behaviors that are 0:04:25.839 --> 0:04:28.360 why people in these regions live a long time. 0:04:28.680 --> 0:04:30.320 Yeah, and what are some of those behaviors? 0:04:30.560 --> 0:04:33.839 Absurdly drinking every day, which is a bit of a stretch, 0:04:35.279 --> 0:04:38.880 you know. I find it stounding that that's out of 0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:43.040 number one, especially because Low Melender is a tea total place. 0:04:43.080 --> 0:04:47.680 But the others, you know, they fit neatly into preconceived 0:04:47.680 --> 0:04:52.200 ideas of what we think is healthy. There is so 0:04:52.400 --> 0:04:56.120 gentle exercise is probably the most sensible, and then there 0:04:56.120 --> 0:05:02.279 are these vaguely defined sort of feel good sounding concepts 0:05:02.440 --> 0:05:07.120 like being the right tribe or connects with your neighbors 0:05:07.760 --> 0:05:09.400 or hang out with loved ones. You know, stuff that 0:05:09.480 --> 0:05:13.680 you want to do anyway, and it's very easily marketable. 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:17.120 To your point on the marketing, why do you think 0:05:17.160 --> 0:05:20.039 this idea took off so well? Was it just like 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:24.400 a brilliant packaging around basic advice with something science and 0:05:24.480 --> 0:05:27.280 sounding about people all living older precisely? 0:05:27.600 --> 0:05:30.520 And it's not just that it's a proven market strategy 0:05:30.600 --> 0:05:32.839 going back to I mean, going back to the first 0:05:32.880 --> 0:05:37.320 Emperor of China. I mean it's not a new sales 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:39.600 pitch to say that, oh, I have the secret to 0:05:39.720 --> 0:05:42.120 living forever, and you just follow my advice, pay me 0:05:42.200 --> 0:05:47.839 my money, and I'll get you there. Now, the beauty 0:05:47.880 --> 0:05:50.760 of that is, first, if people don't live forever, they 0:05:50.760 --> 0:05:56.080 can't complain because they're dead, so your customer complaints division 0:05:56.120 --> 0:05:58.919 has very little to do. But also it's something that 0:05:58.960 --> 0:06:03.159 everybody wants to hear, right especially now we know what 0:06:04.000 --> 0:06:07.400 contributes to longevity, and it's going to see a doctor. 0:06:07.560 --> 0:06:11.279 It's exercise, don't drink, don't smoke right now. If you 0:06:11.279 --> 0:06:16.279 don't want to do that, then you are wide open 0:06:16.320 --> 0:06:19.159 for sales pitches, right, really wide open, and it's really 0:06:19.240 --> 0:06:25.000 kind of an easy win to even just imagine that 0:06:25.080 --> 0:06:27.520 there's a pill that will make you live longer. But 0:06:27.640 --> 0:06:31.240 even if the placebos, it's an appealing idea. It's sort of, 0:06:31.960 --> 0:06:34.760 you know, here's my anxiety reduction process for the day. 0:06:35.080 --> 0:06:37.080 Yeah, and especially if you like to drink. You see 0:06:37.080 --> 0:06:39.279 that and you go, I like this blue zones idea. 0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:41.479 They drink. I'm going to drink too. That's great. 0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:45.840 Exactly the pitch to California Wine Months, like they specifically 0:06:45.880 --> 0:06:48.560 say what kind of wine you should try? Right, it's 0:06:49.960 --> 0:06:54.240 you know, go and get Sardinian kanna now wine like why, 0:06:54.360 --> 0:06:59.600 you know, who knows? But this is a very easy sell. 0:06:59.680 --> 0:07:03.200 And yeah, it's it's also backing up off a sales 0:07:03.240 --> 0:07:06.280 pitch that was around in the seventies that was essentially 0:07:06.440 --> 0:07:08.800 exactly the same. You know, in the seventies there was 0:07:08.800 --> 0:07:12.680 something called longevity zones pitched in the same magazine, pitched 0:07:12.680 --> 0:07:16.560 in National Geographic by a professor of medicine Harvard called 0:07:16.560 --> 0:07:20.480 Alexander Leff. Now let's just say these haven't exactly held up. 0:07:20.840 --> 0:07:23.120 You know, one is in the Hansa Valley of Pakistan, 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:27.200 We've got a one in a place called Viilka Bamba 0:07:27.440 --> 0:07:32.800 and Ecuador, and we've got another in Soviet ab Kazia, Georgia. 0:07:34.160 --> 0:07:39.760 Now these aren't centers of longevity. And the short answer 0:07:39.760 --> 0:07:43.840 to why these places looked on paper, why like people 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:46.679 living past one hundred, was that they were just committing 0:07:46.680 --> 0:07:49.000 pension fraud or they had just simply no idea how 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:49.640 old they were. 0:07:50.000 --> 0:07:53.400 Yeah, let's get into that. So how did you start 0:07:53.400 --> 0:07:55.680 to become skeptical of this idea? How did that tell 0:07:55.760 --> 0:07:57.760 us that whole story of how unfolded and how you 0:07:57.840 --> 0:07:58.760 ended up writing about this. 0:07:59.760 --> 0:08:03.480 I began just with a friend sending me a scientific 0:08:03.520 --> 0:08:08.360 paper because I'm a huge note it's unapologetic at this point. 0:08:08.440 --> 0:08:11.440 And I finished in medical science doctorate and a friend 0:08:11.480 --> 0:08:12.960 of mine had sent me a paper saying, you know, 0:08:13.080 --> 0:08:16.560 you're interested in how long people live. His paper, the 0:08:16.600 --> 0:08:20.720 paper involved was in the top scientific journal in the world, 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:24.720 and it involved someone accidentally rounding off most of their 0:08:24.840 --> 0:08:28.080 data to zero by accident and then publishing the results. 0:08:29.960 --> 0:08:32.120 And that's I mean, that's a shocking thing to do, 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:37.000 and it got me interesting. It's a huge problem if 0:08:37.040 --> 0:08:39.600 you use the correct column in the spreadsheet. The whole 0:08:39.679 --> 0:08:43.120 thing fell apart and you reached the opposite conclusion. But 0:08:43.200 --> 0:08:46.120 the conclusion was about how long it is possible to live? 0:08:46.160 --> 0:08:48.080 You know, what is the limit to human life? So 0:08:48.120 --> 0:08:51.840 it's a really compelling question, how long is it possible 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:54.720 for me to live? How long? And the fact that 0:08:54.760 --> 0:09:00.679 this debate was being undertaken with such terrible evidence was 0:09:00.880 --> 0:09:03.840 amazing to me. And it became more amazing when the 0:09:03.960 --> 0:09:06.400 other top journal in the scientific journal in the world 0:09:06.400 --> 0:09:10.040 published papers stating exactly the opposite conclusion to the first paper, 0:09:11.040 --> 0:09:13.840 and that was based on something even worse. So what 0:09:13.880 --> 0:09:17.120 these people had done is they'd taken every one hundred 0:09:17.120 --> 0:09:19.160 and five year old or record of one hundred and 0:09:19.200 --> 0:09:22.800 five year old in Italy and they had fit a 0:09:22.840 --> 0:09:26.280 model to it. But it was the most biased mathematical 0:09:26.360 --> 0:09:29.280 model possible. It was the only one that gave them 0:09:29.280 --> 0:09:32.960 a publishable result. And so here you have two halves 0:09:33.000 --> 0:09:38.600 of an academic debate. Neither of them are remotely close 0:09:38.679 --> 0:09:42.240 to following the rules or having any integrity. And it 0:09:42.360 --> 0:09:45.280 dragged me in against my will, into this question of 0:09:45.280 --> 0:09:47.720 how long is it possible to live? Do this start 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:48.800 or even make any sense? 0:09:49.720 --> 0:09:51.840 How did that get you the blue zones? Eventually you 0:09:51.880 --> 0:09:53.920 start kind of stripping away at this question. You're kind 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:55.720 of like a thorn in the side of these researchers. 0:09:55.720 --> 0:09:56.520 And then what happens. 0:09:57.040 --> 0:10:01.760 Yeah, I mean more than a thorn. It's it's a 0:10:01.800 --> 0:10:04.679 massive embarrassment to have to retract something from these from 0:10:04.720 --> 0:10:07.360 these papers, and that's exactly what these groups should do. 0:10:08.400 --> 0:10:11.520 But I was sitting on a bus and came up 0:10:11.559 --> 0:10:15.120 with theoretical idea. It's a very non intuitive theoretical idea 0:10:15.440 --> 0:10:18.240 because usually in science get you get measurement error. You 0:10:18.240 --> 0:10:21.079 know what happens. It happens for the Hubble space telescope, 0:10:21.080 --> 0:10:25.160 and happens for the particle colliders in Switzerland. You always 0:10:25.160 --> 0:10:28.280 get measurement error, and usually you can ignore it. You 0:10:28.320 --> 0:10:30.240 can just say, look, who cares, there's a small amount 0:10:30.240 --> 0:10:33.280 of random error. It washes out in the statistical model. Well, 0:10:33.320 --> 0:10:37.080 I found out that mathematically, in a survival process, that's 0:10:37.120 --> 0:10:41.280 not true, and you get this very non intuitive result 0:10:41.400 --> 0:10:45.600 where the number of errors grows exponentially over age. So 0:10:45.600 --> 0:10:48.360 by the time you reach these advanced ages, you theoretically 0:10:48.360 --> 0:10:52.760 expect all of them to be trash. Just it's much 0:10:52.800 --> 0:10:56.000 easier to be an error in paperwork than someone who 0:10:56.000 --> 0:11:00.400 has outlived the rest of humanity, way easier. And this 0:11:00.480 --> 0:11:03.160 is especially the case because a quarter of the world's 0:11:03.240 --> 0:11:05.120 children still don't get a birth certificate. So if you 0:11:05.160 --> 0:11:07.600 go back one hundred years when these people were supposedly born, 0:11:08.559 --> 0:11:11.920 has any paperwork, It gets made up at some point 0:11:11.960 --> 0:11:14.280 between then and now, and if you make a mistake 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:17.680 in that process, you end up being one hundred and five. 0:11:18.160 --> 0:11:21.679 And that's effectively what these old age hair records are. 0:11:22.040 --> 0:11:25.840 Yeah, there airs in the record keeping. So to walk 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:28.880 us through, especially with the blue zone, what are some 0:11:28.960 --> 0:11:32.559 of the errors you've found in these supposed people who 0:11:32.600 --> 0:11:34.080 are living past one hundred and five? 0:11:34.520 --> 0:11:38.560 Well, the Oknawen one was extraordinary because I didn't find this. 0:11:38.880 --> 0:11:44.080 The Japanese government found out that most of the people 0:11:44.360 --> 0:11:46.679 in Japan who were over age one hundred, I mean 0:11:46.880 --> 0:11:49.560 more than eighty two percent were dead. They were long dead, 0:11:50.440 --> 0:11:52.560 so most of them been killed in World War Two. 0:11:53.920 --> 0:11:56.400 And the remarkable thing is in Japan you have this 0:11:56.480 --> 0:11:59.920 sort of self registration of who has died in your household, 0:12:00.760 --> 0:12:04.800 and if an American plane puts a bomb through the household, 0:12:04.800 --> 0:12:07.920 who reports all the deaths, nobody does right, and you're 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:12.720 keep living on paper. Right. So there was this amazing 0:12:12.800 --> 0:12:15.400 finding in Okinawa that if your town had been firebombed, 0:12:16.520 --> 0:12:19.000 you could predict around eighty percent of the variation in 0:12:19.440 --> 0:12:21.560 people reaching one hundred. So if your town's been firebombed, 0:12:21.600 --> 0:12:23.000 everyone reaches one hundred. 0:12:23.080 --> 0:12:26.760 Right, because they died in nineteen forty four, exactly. 0:12:26.320 --> 0:12:29.680 The real secret to longevity, right. And the same goes 0:12:29.720 --> 0:12:32.319 with fire bombing cities where all the records are kept. 0:12:32.920 --> 0:12:38.079 So the Japanese government had gone out to effectively have 0:12:38.240 --> 0:12:41.520 a celebration of old people in Tokyo, and they'd gone 0:12:41.520 --> 0:12:44.000 looking for the worlds for the oldest man in Tokyo. 0:12:45.360 --> 0:12:48.520 And this bizarre process has played out where city officials 0:12:48.559 --> 0:12:50.839 come around to the house. They talked to the grand daughter, 0:12:50.920 --> 0:12:54.160 and the granddaughter says, he's out of Gifu Prefectory. He's 0:12:54.600 --> 0:12:59.040 gone for the day, and Guefoo Prefecture is four hundredilometers away. 0:12:59.040 --> 0:13:01.240 The guys one hundred and eleven, So it's a bit 0:13:01.240 --> 0:13:01.800 of a stretch. 0:13:02.559 --> 0:13:04.280 It's one hundred and five year old guy just taking 0:13:04.280 --> 0:13:04.959 a little jount. 0:13:05.200 --> 0:13:07.120 Yeah, one hundred and eleven. One hundred and eleven year 0:13:07.120 --> 0:13:09.440 old guy apparently he's taken a job, and when they 0:13:09.440 --> 0:13:12.520 come back, she's like, oh, he's out again, Like I 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:15.840 guess if he's down at the girlfriend's or something. So 0:13:15.880 --> 0:13:19.600 this keeps happening until they get a bit concerned and 0:13:19.960 --> 0:13:22.360 the grand daughter turns up to the police station and says, oh, 0:13:22.360 --> 0:13:25.640 we've had a terrible thing going on. The granddad has 0:13:25.679 --> 0:13:29.560 barricaded himself into his room and is fighting off the 0:13:29.679 --> 0:13:31.679 entire family, which again for one hundred and eleven year old, 0:13:31.679 --> 0:13:34.000 is quite the feet right, yeah, a strong guy with 0:13:34.559 --> 0:13:37.440 a strong guy. When the police turn up, he's in 0:13:37.480 --> 0:13:40.320 the room and he's been in the room for thirty 0:13:40.559 --> 0:13:45.000 years dead and they have been collecting the pension the 0:13:45.160 --> 0:13:49.240 entire time and living in living in the house like 0:13:49.280 --> 0:13:51.680 the whole extended family. And there's another guy in the 0:13:51.720 --> 0:13:57.200 backpack at the end of the bed. Now that's this 0:13:57.280 --> 0:13:59.840 is surprisingly normal for one hundred and five year olds 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:01.760 have That actually happens all the time. 0:14:02.280 --> 0:14:06.760 So people are effectively saying that their relatives, who in 0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:09.160 this case died thirty years ago are alive on paper, 0:14:09.200 --> 0:14:12.000 because that way you can keep cash and grandpa's checks 0:14:12.000 --> 0:14:14.120 from the government pension checks exactly. 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:16.760 They had cashed out roughly one hundred grand in his 0:14:16.880 --> 0:14:20.080 pension the day that the city officials had come around. Right, 0:14:20.160 --> 0:14:24.920 So there's a big withdrawal. That's normal. But then they 0:14:24.960 --> 0:14:28.560 go looking for everyone else who is very old, because 0:14:28.560 --> 0:14:30.680 they discovered the oldest woman in Tokyo hasn't been seen 0:14:30.720 --> 0:14:33.920 since nineteen eighty six. And they go around all of Japan. 0:14:34.040 --> 0:14:36.000 Now they check ninety two percent of cases and they 0:14:36.000 --> 0:14:37.960 find that eighty two percent of them are dead. Now 0:14:37.960 --> 0:14:41.120 that's over two hundred and thirty thousand people who are 0:14:42.360 --> 0:14:45.040 dead in reality and alive on paper. And this is 0:14:45.600 --> 0:14:49.400 data that the Blue Zones demographers had just said was 0:14:49.440 --> 0:14:50.320 the best in the world. 0:14:51.000 --> 0:14:56.160 Yeah, practically this plays out for the listener. You hear 0:14:56.240 --> 0:14:58.760 some advice from Blue Zones that there's these so many 0:14:58.800 --> 0:15:01.840 people over one hundred five in Japan, and therefore you 0:15:01.880 --> 0:15:04.400 should eat the food they eat, you should do this 0:15:04.480 --> 0:15:06.280 thing they do. But it turns out they've all died 0:15:06.320 --> 0:15:07.160 in the eighties. 0:15:07.360 --> 0:15:10.040 They've all died in the eighties. And not only have 0:15:10.080 --> 0:15:13.480 they all died in or in the forties, not only 0:15:13.480 --> 0:15:16.760 have they all died but you know, this is supposed 0:15:16.800 --> 0:15:19.000 to be based on interviews with two hundred and sixty 0:15:19.000 --> 0:15:22.040 odd centenarians. Now those have never been published. And if 0:15:22.080 --> 0:15:26.400 I had the secret to eternal life and it was 0:15:26.480 --> 0:15:30.160 in a few interviews, I would publish those interviews. Yeah, 0:15:30.200 --> 0:15:32.960 and this is much more a sort of oh, trust me, bro, 0:15:33.080 --> 0:15:36.920 these interviews say what to eat? Where's the data? Because 0:15:36.920 --> 0:15:39.680 the Japanese government is saying eighty two percent of these 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:42.720 people at least are dead. And this happens in every 0:15:43.280 --> 0:15:47.360 blue zone. I looked at the Greek blue zone, right, 0:15:47.480 --> 0:15:50.480 they had a really similar process play out. They had 0:15:50.480 --> 0:15:54.600 more than nine thousand centenarians on paper. The global financial 0:15:54.600 --> 0:15:59.200 crisis comes along and the effectively the Greek government first 0:15:59.200 --> 0:16:02.240 do a review find roughly two hundred three hundred errors. 0:16:02.520 --> 0:16:04.720 But the German government comes in and says, we'll not 0:16:04.800 --> 0:16:09.320 give you a penny until you really check. And it 0:16:09.320 --> 0:16:11.360 turns out at least seventy two percent of these people 0:16:11.480 --> 0:16:14.960 are collecting the pension from the graveyard. And after that, 0:16:15.720 --> 0:16:17.960 the island of Yourkorea, which is one of these blue zones, 0:16:18.360 --> 0:16:19.880 just has no centenarians. 0:16:20.320 --> 0:16:24.880 Wow. So this feels like one of those where I 0:16:24.920 --> 0:16:28.280 think if it were we looked at these numbers, we 0:16:28.360 --> 0:16:32.040 think there's a lot of people who are centenarians there. 0:16:32.960 --> 0:16:34.920 We rolled with the idea, but the fact that then 0:16:34.960 --> 0:16:36.680 there was a claim around what we talked to all 0:16:36.720 --> 0:16:38.840 of them, but then they never published the interviews. That's 0:16:38.840 --> 0:16:41.560 where it starts to feel a little more sketchy to me. 0:16:41.960 --> 0:16:45.000 It really becomes sketchy when you look at the low Melinda. 0:16:45.520 --> 0:16:47.960 Yeah, let's talk about that, because in the US, you 0:16:47.960 --> 0:16:50.160 would think we had good record keeping and things like that. 0:16:51.440 --> 0:16:54.200 The US is really surprising in this regard, right. We 0:16:54.840 --> 0:16:56.840 we sort of carry with us this idea that if 0:16:56.880 --> 0:17:01.120 something's written down officially then it actually is is probably true. 0:17:01.440 --> 0:17:03.920 But let's just ignore that for the moment and just 0:17:03.920 --> 0:17:06.760 look at Loma Linda on the face of it. Well, 0:17:06.760 --> 0:17:10.560 the CDC measures Loma Linda for longevity and it is 0:17:10.720 --> 0:17:13.719 nowhere near the best place in the US, and at 0:17:13.800 --> 0:17:16.080 least a quarter of the US and perhaps three quarters 0:17:16.080 --> 0:17:19.280 of the US has higher longevity than Loma Linda. Now 0:17:19.280 --> 0:17:21.600 that's the independent data. So when I took the independent 0:17:21.680 --> 0:17:25.080 data to the founder of the Blue Zones, I said, 0:17:25.119 --> 0:17:29.000 where is your evidence the people here live past one hundred. Now, 0:17:29.000 --> 0:17:31.439 he has admitted in The New York Times and to 0:17:31.520 --> 0:17:35.800 Science Magazine that he came up with Loma Linda because 0:17:35.800 --> 0:17:40.960 his editor asked him to, oh wow, find America's blue zone. Right, 0:17:41.359 --> 0:17:43.640 he asked him to find America's blue zone. The next day, 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:47.639 on the drive between his house in La and Las Vegas, 0:17:47.800 --> 0:17:53.119 there's a turn at Loma Linda. And for twenty years 0:17:53.160 --> 0:17:57.320 he has marketed this as if there was the fountain 0:17:57.359 --> 0:18:00.840 of youth beneath the freeway next to the Costco. 0:18:04.000 --> 0:18:06.960 No Costco's pretty powerful man who knows it, right, and 0:18:07.040 --> 0:18:07.520 right near. 0:18:07.359 --> 0:18:11.840 The jumper juice there's the secret. Right. It's astonishing. And 0:18:11.880 --> 0:18:15.040 then the follow up claim is that, oh I forgot 0:18:15.080 --> 0:18:19.600 to delist it as a blue zone. Now again from perspective, 0:18:19.640 --> 0:18:24.120 this guy has sold part of his business to Adventist 0:18:24.160 --> 0:18:28.159 Health because there's an Adventist community on the basis of 0:18:28.200 --> 0:18:31.639 what I don't know what is the basis of this 0:18:31.720 --> 0:18:36.119 twenty years of relentless marketing. But then there's the meta problem, right, 0:18:36.119 --> 0:18:40.720 there's a deeper problem here, because this isn't a matter 0:18:40.840 --> 0:18:43.520 of you've got a bunch of people going along with 0:18:43.560 --> 0:18:45.520 a mail order scheme. I mean, in a sense it is, 0:18:45.680 --> 0:18:48.879 but you have one hundred scientific papers on this place. 0:18:50.760 --> 0:18:53.280 You have prominent scientists right at the top of the 0:18:53.280 --> 0:18:56.680 field backing it up. Now, if it's made up, why 0:18:57.480 --> 0:19:00.359 are they unable to say that it's a fantasy? See 0:19:01.880 --> 0:19:04.840 and you know you find this again in Costa Rica. 0:19:05.080 --> 0:19:07.639 The basis of finding the Costa Rican blue zone was 0:19:08.680 --> 0:19:11.320 mister but paid a Costa Rican demographer and they went 0:19:11.320 --> 0:19:14.640 out the next day and discovered a Costa Rican blue zone. Now, 0:19:14.680 --> 0:19:16.879 when the un measured that data, they said that Costa 0:19:16.920 --> 0:19:19.280 Eca was quote bottom, near the bottom of the pack 0:19:19.680 --> 0:19:22.600 in terms of late life survival. So really the question 0:19:22.800 --> 0:19:27.399 is why are our supposedly independent scientists not able to 0:19:27.400 --> 0:19:31.600 detect a twenty year fantasy? And this is one of 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:36.760 the most popular concepts in this field. And I've had 0:19:36.800 --> 0:19:37.520 no answers to this. 0:19:38.920 --> 0:19:41.360 Why do you think this has gotten so much coverage 0:19:41.440 --> 0:19:44.480 even in science circles? Like you said, I. 0:19:44.400 --> 0:19:47.120 Think the science circles are just as susceptible to this 0:19:47.240 --> 0:19:50.640 beautiful idea that things are better far in a faraway place. Right. 0:19:50.760 --> 0:19:57.240 Most science is done by white, Western educated people, whatever 0:19:57.320 --> 0:20:00.399 that label, that sort of catch all label throw on it. 0:20:01.720 --> 0:20:03.560 And I think a lot of people those people are 0:20:03.600 --> 0:20:06.000 the target of this marketing, and they've brought into it, 0:20:06.040 --> 0:20:09.560 and now it's turned out to be bank they're hugely embarrassed. 0:20:09.560 --> 0:20:11.920 I mean there's a sort of a field wide embarrassment 0:20:12.160 --> 0:20:15.199 in the demographic community that we've sat around and just 0:20:15.200 --> 0:20:17.680 sort of believe this. Not just the first time, this 0:20:17.800 --> 0:20:20.280 is multiple times we've bought the same story and it's 0:20:20.280 --> 0:20:24.560 turned out to be bunk. So, you know, in one sense, 0:20:24.640 --> 0:20:27.520 it's just that we are susceptible to this marketing idea 0:20:28.040 --> 0:20:30.840 that shangrile Ara is there and all we have to 0:20:30.880 --> 0:20:32.840 do is go there and act like it and will 0:20:32.880 --> 0:20:36.720 be fine. It's very alluring, especially because you get to 0:20:36.760 --> 0:20:41.160 go for a holiday, beach holiday degrease. Right, it doesn't work, 0:20:42.440 --> 0:20:44.520 but we've bought it. Anyway. 0:20:45.200 --> 0:20:46.600 What do you think that says about us? 0:20:47.200 --> 0:20:50.199 I think it says we're still in this mindset of 0:20:50.359 --> 0:20:53.840 monster leone. Right. We want there to be a fountain 0:20:53.880 --> 0:20:57.400 of youth because it's easier than the tough reality of 0:20:58.560 --> 0:21:01.760 not just taking care of your health. But I get 0:21:01.760 --> 0:21:04.840 asked all the time, what's the secret to living a 0:21:04.880 --> 0:21:09.320 long time? One of the most uncomfortable answers is be 0:21:09.440 --> 0:21:14.360 born in a rich place that has free healthcare. Right now, 0:21:15.240 --> 0:21:19.240 especially in America, that's not a message you really want 0:21:19.240 --> 0:21:21.400 to hear because you can't do anything about it. I mean, 0:21:22.720 --> 0:21:28.159 one of the key problems in American health seems to 0:21:28.200 --> 0:21:32.560 be that you buy fake medicines because you can't afford 0:21:32.680 --> 0:21:38.320 real medicines. It's just a simple fundamental problem. It's not 0:21:39.400 --> 0:21:41.440 the people who mind. This is not their personal fault. 0:21:41.720 --> 0:21:47.120 There's a systemic problem here where if you have someone 0:21:47.119 --> 0:21:49.920 who can't afford their cancer ments, they will buy anything, 0:21:50.720 --> 0:21:54.600 and an industry is developed to feed that and this 0:21:54.760 --> 0:21:57.760 is part of that industry. The longevity industry is as 0:21:57.800 --> 0:22:02.479 part of this framing that we can give you a 0:22:02.520 --> 0:22:05.880 secret pill that's ten times just so it's ten times 0:22:05.960 --> 0:22:09.040 cheaper than the real stuff, unless you're pitching to billionaires. 0:22:10.480 --> 0:22:13.199 And that has really rotted out the evidence base of 0:22:13.280 --> 0:22:16.320 medicine here. I mean, it's really shockingly rotting out the 0:22:16.400 --> 0:22:21.400 evidence base of medicine. We have these laws coming in 0:22:22.560 --> 0:22:25.720 to the states that effectively throw out the hippocratic oath, 0:22:25.760 --> 0:22:29.960 and they're being pushed by longevity research. The Alliance for 0:22:30.040 --> 0:22:34.760 Longevity Initiatives is pushing this idea that we can I mean, 0:22:34.760 --> 0:22:36.600 this is now a law on the books. You can 0:22:36.600 --> 0:22:40.280 now give a person an experimental treatment of any dose 0:22:40.359 --> 0:22:42.080 for any reason, as long as you say it's to 0:22:42.119 --> 0:22:45.680 extend longevity, and if they die, you are not liable. 0:22:46.320 --> 0:22:51.240 Oh wow, it's a little alarming. Yeah, we're going to 0:22:51.280 --> 0:22:52.679