Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to coast am on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: And welcome back George Nor along with George, you're and
Speaker 2: George before we move on to your next book, The
Speaker 2: One hundred Year Toaster. I was just kidding. I'm not
Speaker 2: thirty nine.
Speaker 3: I sort of get that. By the way, I put
Speaker 3: a couple of additional links up for people who visit
Speaker 3: the urbansurvival dot com site. I put up some There's
Speaker 3: a study out not a brand news state but current
Speaker 3: and it says if you play golf you can live
Speaker 3: five years longer. So there you go. There's your excuse
Speaker 3: to get out on the course. It's very good socially,
Speaker 3: it gets you a lot of walking activity. It was
Speaker 3: a mortality study among Swedish golfers. So I thought that
Speaker 3: one was kind of interesting and want to keep your
Speaker 3: eyes on. In terms of it sounds strange and gross,
Speaker 3: but ecal microbiotic transplants are coming. There's more and more
Speaker 3: going on in modern medicine that links what goes on
Speaker 3: in your gut, your health of your intestines, and the
Speaker 3: processes by which we break down food. It's being linked
Speaker 3: the gut microbiome. That's called is being linked to everything
Speaker 3: from Alzheimer's to cardiac issues, to various forms of cancer
Speaker 3: and so forth. And so one of the avenues medicine
Speaker 3: is taking is to actually transplants stuff from a healthy
Speaker 3: person's guts into a non healthy person's guts so that
Speaker 3: the microbiome can heal itself. So that's a weird one
Speaker 3: to keep an eye on. I also put a link
Speaker 3: up to the thymus Regeneration Immino Restoration, Insulin Mitigation Extension Trial,
Speaker 3: which is that the met Foreman and DHGA interduct, So
Speaker 3: that link is up on the site, and there's one
Speaker 3: or two others in there, biometals, iodine, melbten and things
Speaker 3: like that that can also have an impact on both
Speaker 3: Alzheimer's and vascular dementia. And we're really interested in those
Speaker 3: two because both my wife and I have the A
Speaker 3: p O E four. You lose the genetic lottery this,
Speaker 3: which unfortunately increases statistically our chances of at some point
Speaker 3: being more crazy than we are already.
Speaker 2: And I wasn't kidding about your dentist. He really believes
Speaker 2: that you look younger, doesn't he.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah. In fact, he said you have to
Speaker 3: tell me how you do it. And so this was
Speaker 3: six months ago we were in for our teeth cleanings,
Speaker 3: and so I wrote the book and gave him a
Speaker 3: review copy and he looks at so, yeah, this stuff
Speaker 3: does work. It's not a you know, you're not going
Speaker 3: to wake up tomorrow morning in your twenties and so forth,
Speaker 3: not when you're mid seventies. But you really can slow
Speaker 3: the clock down dramatically. And the quality of life. Just
Speaker 3: being able to get out of bed without hating the
Speaker 3: idea of getting out of bed, you know, the aches
Speaker 3: and pains and so forth, that's really worth something. And
Speaker 3: the other thing I think Church and you're really a
Speaker 3: great example of it. If you just go sit on
Speaker 3: the couch and watch TV, the grim Reaper is going
Speaker 3: to come sit on the couch with you. And the
Speaker 3: way the way you got to take on aging is
Speaker 3: don't stop living. You've got to have new goals, new activities.
Speaker 3: You know, this whole lifelong learning process that I've been
Speaker 3: involved in when I was busy in the higher education realms,
Speaker 3: you know, in colleges and higher education and software platforms,
Speaker 3: those things that keeping the mind busy and doing new stuff,
Speaker 3: travel and so forth, those really just wonderful age extension strategies.
Speaker 2: It's critical. I told my dad when he retired at
Speaker 2: sixty from the Ford Mortar Company, I said, Dad, keep
Speaker 2: busy right after you retire sixties young. And he lasted
Speaker 2: until he was eighty eight, and had he not fallen George,
Speaker 2: I think he could have gone much longer. My mother's
Speaker 2: ninety five and it's still going strong. But there's something
Speaker 2: to be said about keeping your mind active.
Speaker 3: And also physically active too. I mean, your dad's a
Speaker 3: perfect example. Eighty eight is well about the expectations for
Speaker 3: his age cohort at the time he retired. My mom
Speaker 3: moved to ninety three. So if you have some lucky
Speaker 3: jeans in your family, you may lose on some of
Speaker 3: the disease markers like high blood pressure or you know,
Speaker 3: higher risk of Alzheimer's, but you can also have big
Speaker 3: wins in terms of overall age expectation.
Speaker 2: Now, the one hundred year toaster, what is that all about?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I've I've been writing about economics for
Speaker 3: thirty years. The Peoplonomics website that I publish, that's that's
Speaker 3: all about investing and so forth. And I wanted to
Speaker 3: sit back and consider how do we hit the goals.
Speaker 3: You know, the World Economic Forum and several groups are
Speaker 3: trying to talk about, well, the future is going to
Speaker 3: involve eating bugs and you know, dialing back you'll have
Speaker 3: less and be happy with it, and that kind of talk.
Speaker 3: But what's interesting is I wanted to sit down, methodically
Speaker 3: go through what we as a society have done placing
Speaker 3: money at the forefront of our value system. In other words,
Speaker 3: my wife and I have been eating off plane correl
Speaker 3: dishware for thirty years, almost twenty five years. I had
Speaker 3: Corell on the boat because it's a vitreous of semi
Speaker 3: glass ceramic and nothing reaches off of it. It's microwave proof.
Speaker 3: And we still have dishes we had on the sailboat
Speaker 3: and we're using them today. And there are so many
Speaker 3: things where we have as a nation gone to the
Speaker 3: planned obsolescence business model. And what happens is we have
Speaker 3: we have products that are like pick cell phones. You know,
Speaker 3: there's always a new cell phone on the market. But
Speaker 3: I have friends and they're very smart people, I mean
Speaker 3: really smart people, and they're still running around with Ald
Speaker 3: Motorolla flip phones, the early ones. I remember those, and
Speaker 3: you know what. They can still make a phone call.
Speaker 3: And do you really need to have banking and four
Speaker 3: K video feeding a virtual reality display in your pocket
Speaker 3: everywhere you go? An the answer is probably not. Do
Speaker 3: we need new car designs every year? Well? Probably not.
Speaker 3: Should we be pushing electric vehicles as hard as we
Speaker 3: are when you can't go anywhere because there's no charging stations.
Speaker 3: We have a HouseGuest visiting us for the Thanksgiving period,
Speaker 3: these tax attorney fellow, we call them Art Consigliery, and
Speaker 3: we were comparing the driving of an internal combustion car
Speaker 3: from Columbus, Ohio, which is where his practice is, to
Speaker 3: our place in East Texas, and he could not do
Speaker 3: it anywhere near as easily in an electric vehicle. He
Speaker 3: would have had to spend two maybe two days on
Speaker 3: the road if he could find a charging platform for
Speaker 3: an electric vehicle. And that's what really has separated the
Speaker 3: success of Tesla, which began with that system's view, this
Speaker 3: is you've got to have someplace to plug this stuff in.
Speaker 3: So what it must do. Tesla did all of these
Speaker 3: charging stations, and as a result, they were the predominant
Speaker 3: initial electric car in America. And there are so few
Speaker 3: charging stations outside of urban areas that you know, the
Speaker 3: annual model of internal combustion cars as ubs trucks still
Speaker 3: very much with us. And get it doesn't have to
Speaker 3: be that we're out disposable society. Can you remember the
Speaker 3: Checker caabs George.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, in yellow cabs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, Checker Cabs had a group called the Checker
Speaker 3: Motor Company and I think they lasted until nineteen sixty
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty seven or so. And this is just one
Speaker 3: example of planned obsolescence. It doesn't really benefit anyone, Timworth, Peterbilt.
Speaker 3: These are over the road trucks that easily go millions
Speaker 3: of miles with routine maintenance. And yet my son just
Speaker 3: bought a new car because he bought the disposable, and
Speaker 3: everybody's in the same boat. He bought a car he
Speaker 3: knew it would last one hundred thousand miles. It got
Speaker 3: over one hundred thousand miles, and so it was time
Speaker 3: to get rid of it and get into something his
Speaker 3: next hundred thousand miles of driving. And see, that's that's
Speaker 3: the kind of disposable stuff that doesn't make sense. And
Speaker 3: that's what the one hundred year toaster was about, or
Speaker 3: is about. It's about all these little decisions to make
Speaker 3: in life, planned obsolescence and unfortunately the economy. And this
Speaker 3: is to the balancing act. If you have an annual
Speaker 3: model of a car, forget the checker that you can
Speaker 3: drive for forty years and throw a new you know,
Speaker 3: another Hemi engine in it at the five hundred thousand
Speaker 3: mile mark. Right, those cars just don't exist anymore, accept collectors.
Speaker 3: But what we have done is we have made the
Speaker 3: business model in finance is all about growth and the
Speaker 3: story of future growth. And if the number of people
Speaker 3: and this is straight out of population forecasts the UN
Speaker 3: World Bank folks like that when world population levels and
Speaker 3: begins to even decrease, how do you show growth other
Speaker 3: than having dispoke more disposable products. But that runs exactly
Speaker 3: counter to the how do you slow down the consumption
Speaker 3: that you know, we joke around here about has the
Speaker 3: last order of fish and chips been placed yet? Right?
Speaker 3: Because we're strip minding the oceans of all of their nutrients.
Speaker 3: And so how do how do we get the earth
Speaker 3: back in balance if we keep making throwaway products? And
Speaker 3: the answer is we need to throw away the dollar
Speaker 3: heavy economic model and stop valuing dollars. So another here
Speaker 3: comes another book, right, and I started writing it last week,
Speaker 3: and it's on downsizing because the only way you can
Speaker 3: get there is by having people inspect their life purpose
Speaker 3: and begin consuming to purpose. And that's a very hard
Speaker 3: concept for people because status, sex, Hollywood celeb all that stuff.
Speaker 3: The Joneses, right, we got to keep up with the Joneses.
Speaker 3: And although if your neighbor has a new writing more,
Speaker 3: or you've got to get a new writing more. If
Speaker 3: your writing more still works, you're going to get a bigger, better,
Speaker 3: faster one, so you can outpose your the neighbor. And
Speaker 3: so that's what we've gotten ourselves into. We've become so
Speaker 3: absorbed with media and trying to you look marbelous, right,
Speaker 3: So in order to keep up our look and our
Speaker 3: and our status, we make continuous bad choices about demanding
Speaker 3: durable consumer goods. And this whole deal with the one
Speaker 3: hundred year toes. I had a nineteen twenties toaster when
Speaker 3: I founded a good will store in Seattle when I
Speaker 3: was back in my sailing period and kept it on
Speaker 3: the boat. You cannot find the one hundred year coaster today.
Speaker 2: Now did it work?
Speaker 3: Ohly? It worked. You know, I sold the boat in gosh,
Speaker 3: what two thousand and two or three, and it had
Speaker 3: given me eleven years being kicked around on board a
Speaker 3: sail boat, and it was still just a great toaster.
Speaker 3: Since then, we've been through like three or four toasters,
Speaker 3: you know, you buy them on Amazon and you know,
Speaker 3: other nineteen bucks in the last four or five years.
Speaker 3: And you know, and one of the things I did
Speaker 3: in the book is, you know, you look at the toaster.
Speaker 3: We could have one good toaster company, or we can
Speaker 3: have twenty mediocre toaster companies. But the mediocre toasts fill
Speaker 3: of social function. And the social function is they give
Speaker 3: people something to do for work, so they have more
Speaker 3: money so they can buy more coasters. So toaster companies
Speaker 3: can contribute to growth of financial statements. And so you've
Speaker 3: got this great collision between articulated environmental values on the
Speaker 3: one hand, and the and the need for turnover in
Speaker 3: industry so that they can have what we call synthetic growth.
Speaker 3: And that's that also has had a lot to do
Speaker 3: with the rise and fall of Europe. They opened up
Speaker 3: Europe to huge in migration from other places, and they
Speaker 3: got a great bump when the Wall came down, and
Speaker 3: then and then the uh the migration from North Africa
Speaker 3: and so forth. Great economic stimulus, but but as you
Speaker 3: get past that, in need its synthetic growth payoff. We
Speaker 3: have the same problem with US Mexico relations. We've had
Speaker 3: a wonderful stimulus to the American economy from additional persons
Speaker 3: coming in. It has kept the price of housing high.
Speaker 3: We've gotten so much more work done. It's kept wages
Speaker 3: relatively a little bit lower because there are more people
Speaker 3: to spread the work app and it has prevented the
Speaker 3: unemployment rate from going high. But the downside of it
Speaker 3: is when the synthetic growth ends, it turns around in bites,
Speaker 3: and that's when you get economic depressions.
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