# A Look Into the Blue Zones

An episode of [Ground Truths](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1728526108), 18 Jan 2026, 56 min.

Audio: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/181375756/dac5fc07311defb6e4e8f9f56e9e4ef5.mp3

Back in 2005 Dan Buettner patented Blue Zones. He’s written 9 books, of which 5 were NY Times bestsellers, and has another one in the works. His 2023 Netflix documentary series “Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones” won Emmy awards and was widely viewed. Many of the main points that Dan has emphasized over the years—healthy diet (he highlighted whole grains, beans, nuts, greens, and “peasant food” here), physical activity, social engagement, and sense of purpose—are backed up by randomized trials and/or large, prospective studies, as I reviewed in Super Agers. In this interview, I asked Dan about the critique he’s faced, predominantly from Saul Newman, a biologist in the UK, about accuracy of the data for extreme longevity in the blue zones. In December 2025, two of his collaborators published in The Gerontologist a rebuttal response (open-access) entitled “The validity of Blue Zones demography: a response to critiques” on the rigorous demographic work they’ve done. We also discussed the marketing and business operations of Blue Zones LLC, the company he sold to Adventist Health in 2020. His son, Danny, is the EVP of the company and likely successor to Dan’s work in the future. As Dan said, “He’s my genetic upgrade.” I hope you find this conversation informative. An AI-generated transcript is available in the tab at top right above. Some biomedical updates from the past week: * A vaccine to prevent colon cancer in carriers of mutations of Lynch Syndrome looks good for strong immune response and safety, ready for Phase 3 clinical trials * A review of the data of Tylenol during pregnancy reaffirms its safety and lack of increased risk for autism, ADHD, and intellectual disability. * Our perspective/review on how AI and large language models can reduce global health inequities * Another big jump vs refractory autoimmune diseases, this time for hemolytic anemia, using engineered T cells. See my recent review of this topic, from treatment to cures. * A pair of new large prospective cohort studies that reinforce the importance of even small increases in physical activity, along with sleep and diet, for reduction all-cause mortality and improvement in healthspan. Thanks to Ground Truths subscribers (nearly 200,000) from every US state and 210 countries. Your subscription to these free essays and podcasts makes my work in putting them together worthwhile. Please join! If you found this interesting PLEASE share it! Paid subscriptions are voluntary and all proceeds from them go to support Scripps Research. They do allow for posting comments and questions, which I do my best to respond to. Please don’t hesitate to post comments and give me feedback. Let me know topics that you would like to see covered. Many thanks to those who have contributed—they have greatly helped fund our summer internship programs for the past two years. It enabled us to accept and support 47 summer interns in 2025! We aim to accept even more of the several thousand who will apply for summer 2026 Thank you Annie Fenn, MD, Harshi Peiris, Ph.D., Strategy Shots, Rebecca Moore, Lynn L, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dan Buettner! Join me for my next live video in the app. Get full access to Ground Truths at erictopol.substack.com/subscribe

## Transcript

[0:00] People are coming on board,
[0:01] and I am just delighted to have Dan Buettner with me.
[0:05] This is around 20-year anniversary of when Dan got the Blue
[0:11] Zones started,
[0:12] SPEAKER_01: patented the Blue Zones with his work with Gianni Pez and Michel Poulain,
[0:23] SPEAKER_01: a physician in Italy and a demographer in Greece.
[0:28] SPEAKER_01: working together to form the Blue Zones.
[0:30] SPEAKER_01: They'd done some work,
[0:32] SPEAKER_01: I think,
[0:32] SPEAKER_01: in Sardinia,
[0:33] SPEAKER_01: and you were working,
[0:34] SPEAKER_01: you had been to Okinawa,
[0:36] SPEAKER_01: and somehow you came together,
[0:37] SPEAKER_01: right,
[0:37] SPEAKER_01: Dan?
[0:38] SPEAKER_00: Yes.
[0:39] SPEAKER_00: Well,
[0:39] SPEAKER_00: I think the genesis,
[0:41] SPEAKER_00: it was a,
[0:42] SPEAKER_00: I got a grant from the National Institutes on Aging to,
[0:46] SPEAKER_00: in a sense,
[0:46] SPEAKER_00: reverse engineer longevity.
[0:49] And the whole project was predicated on the Danish twin study
[0:54] that established that
[0:55] only about 20% to 25% of the variance of how long we live is
[1:00] dictated by genes.
[1:02] SPEAKER_00: 75% is something else.
[1:04] So I reasoned that if we could find the areas where people live
[1:06] the longest and
[1:08] SPEAKER_00: then tease out the common denominators,
[1:11] it might point in the direction of some lessons the rest of us
[1:15] could learn.
[1:16] SPEAKER_00: And along the way,
[1:17] SPEAKER_00: I met Gianni Pes in Sardinia,
[1:21] who was identifying clusters of centenarians in the highlands
[1:25] in Oleostra.
[1:27] And Gianni had been working with this Belgian demographer named
[1:32] Michel Poulin.
[1:33] SPEAKER_00: And together, they wrote an article recently.
[1:38] SPEAKER_00: academic article in 2003 about the Sardinian Blue Zone.
[1:44] SPEAKER_00: And then I found another one in Okinawa,
[1:47] SPEAKER_00: thanks to the Wilcox brothers,
[1:49] SPEAKER_00: Bradley and Craig Wilcox,
[1:51] SPEAKER_00: who had separately identified and studied a population in Okinawa.
[1:57] SPEAKER_00: And then not too far from you,
[2:00] SPEAKER_00: in Loma Linda,
[2:02] SPEAKER_00: California,
[2:03] SPEAKER_00: Gary Fraser,
[2:05] SPEAKER_00: who ran the Adventist Health Study,
[2:07] SPEAKER_00: followed 103,000 Americans and found that the Adventists,
[2:14] SPEAKER_00: the adherent Adventists,
[2:16] SPEAKER_00: conservative Christians,
[2:17] were living about seven years longer than their North American
[2:20] counterparts and
[2:22] SPEAKER_00: wrote the original article in 2005.
[2:24] SPEAKER_00: It was a cover story for National Geographic.
[2:29] SPEAKER_00: Since then,
[2:29] SPEAKER_00: I got two more National Geographic grants,
[2:32] SPEAKER_00: identified a blue zone in Ikaria,
[2:34] SPEAKER_00: Greece.
[2:35] SPEAKER_00: Interesting for you,
[2:37] SPEAKER_00: Dr.
[2:37] SPEAKER_00: Topol,
[2:38] SPEAKER_00: because this population doesn't appear to suffer any Alzheimer's.
[2:43] SPEAKER_00: Only 10,000 people, but still, it's an extraordinary population.
[2:48] Then in Costa Rica,
[2:49] the Nicoya Peninsula,
[2:50] we have a population with the lowest population
[2:53] SPEAKER_00: rate of middle-aged mortality in the world.
[2:57] SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
[2:58] That means that these people have about a two-fold better
[3:03] chance of reaching a healthy age 95.
[3:06] SPEAKER_00: We don't promise people 100.
[3:07] SPEAKER_00: You have to have won the genetic lottery to reach 100.
[3:10] SPEAKER_00: But mid-90s is attainable by most people listening right now, by the way.
[3:15] And in Costa Rica,
[3:18] they appear to do it better than any place else in the world.
[3:21] SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
[3:22] SPEAKER_01: no,
[3:22] SPEAKER_01: it's really what you've been doing now for,
[3:25] SPEAKER_01: I would say,
[3:26] SPEAKER_01: about two decades as a champion,
[3:28] SPEAKER_01: as an advocate for lifestyle factors that you've learned from
[3:33] these blue zones of extreme longevity and other features that
[3:37] you just mentioned
[3:39] SPEAKER_01: from many visits,
[3:40] SPEAKER_01: interviews with people at these places.
[3:43] And it's been a great proponent of something that's
[3:47] undervalued,
[3:48] which is lifestyle factors.
[3:51] SPEAKER_01: We know them, but they don't necessarily get incorporated in art.
[3:57] SPEAKER_01: I mean,
[3:58] a perfect example of that is 75% of Americans don't even have
[4:02] the minimus of
[4:05] SPEAKER_01: physical activity.
[4:07] So this is so important because what you did over these years
[4:12] was independent.
[4:13] SPEAKER_01: I wrote a book, as you know, Super Agers that came out.
[4:16] SPEAKER_01: Great book.
[4:17] SPEAKER_00: Great book.
[4:18] SPEAKER_01: And basically, we came to similar conclusions.
[4:21] SPEAKER_01: That is,
[4:23] SPEAKER_01: it's really not the genes are not a big factor,
[4:25] SPEAKER_01: but rather lifestyle factors are very important,
[4:28] SPEAKER_01: prominent,
[4:29] SPEAKER_01: and that we're not
[4:31] SPEAKER_01: pushing anti-aging supplements or any other things that are,
[4:36] SPEAKER_01: yeah,
[4:37] SPEAKER_01: these hucksters that are basically peptides.
[4:40] SPEAKER_01: I mean, you name it, all kinds of things with no data.
[4:43] SPEAKER_01: So you provided the background, the evidence for healthy aging.
[4:49] SPEAKER_01: Now, while we get to that, you came up with this power nine
[4:54] kind of summarize the lifestyle factors that you saw were the
[4:57] common threads.
[4:58] SPEAKER_01: Can you just kind of give a quick sense about that?
[5:01] SPEAKER_01: Because now people are questioning wine.
[5:03] They're questioning whether there's ever really been evidence
[5:07] about religion as
[5:08] SPEAKER_01: being a faith,
[5:09] SPEAKER_01: as being part of that.
[5:11] SPEAKER_01: And then also,
[5:12] SPEAKER_01: I don't know if the power of nine includes sleep,
[5:14] but maybe you can just comment about what are the lifestyle
[5:18] factors as you've seen
[5:20] SPEAKER_01: over these years.
[5:22] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I wrote this cover story.
[5:24] SPEAKER_00: It was the most successful cover story National Geographic has had.
[5:28] SPEAKER_00: It was one more and more.
[5:29] SPEAKER_00: I was number two, actually.
[5:31] SPEAKER_00: And then I spent about five years writing a book,
[5:34] SPEAKER_00: and I visited these blue zones probably collectively 40 times,
[5:39] SPEAKER_00: and I networked with the top scientists who study these places.
[5:43] SPEAKER_00: So I was in a perfect position to synthesize
[5:48] all of the explanations or the characteristics that seem to be
[5:52] driving longevity.
[5:54] And at the very end,
[5:56] you know,
[5:57] I know enough that people want to take away.
[6:01] SPEAKER_00: They want it summed up, distilled for them.
[6:04] SPEAKER_00: And the Power 9 was my effort to distill.
[6:07] SPEAKER_00: And the Power 9 falls in essentially four categories.
[6:11] SPEAKER_00: First of all, they're getting the equivalent of about
[6:16] SPEAKER_00: 12,000 steps a day moving naturally.
[6:22] Where they live,
[6:24] every time they go to work or friend's house,
[6:25] it occasions a walk.
[6:27] SPEAKER_00: They have gardens out back, even to their hundreds, all five blue zones.
[6:31] SPEAKER_00: They're gardening, which is the great.
[6:33] And their houses aren't full of the mechanical conveniences
[6:37] that do much of our work for us.
[6:39] SPEAKER_00: They're still doing yard work by hand and
[6:42] SPEAKER_00: And kitchen work by hand.
[6:44] And that all adds up in the scheme of things,
[6:46] keeping their metabolisms running higher.
[6:49] SPEAKER_00: The second biggest category, they're eating peasant food.
[6:53] SPEAKER_00: They're not eating superfoods or taking supplements.
[6:56] They're eating the stuff at the bottom row of the grocery store
[7:01] for $2 a pound.
[7:03] SPEAKER_00: What is that?
[7:03] SPEAKER_00: They're eating whole grains.
[7:06] SPEAKER_00: uh, barley, um, wheat, corn, uh, rice.
[7:12] SPEAKER_00: Uh, they're eating, um, greens and garden vegetables.
[7:15] SPEAKER_00: They all have gardens.
[7:16] SPEAKER_00: I'm at tubers, sweet potatoes, regular potatoes.
[7:21] SPEAKER_00: Um,
[7:22] SPEAKER_00: Uh, nuts, nuts is the go-to snack.
[7:24] SPEAKER_00: And then the cornerstone of every longevity diet in the world is beans.
[7:28] SPEAKER_00: All five, five blue zones, beans is a cornerstone.
[7:32] SPEAKER_00: Right.
[7:32] SPEAKER_00: Uh, number three, they, they, they live either.
[7:36] SPEAKER_00: Well, usually, and, uh, either, or either, and, uh,
[7:41] SPEAKER_00: And or in extended families and or they have great social networks.
[7:46] SPEAKER_00: So you don't see loneliness in blue zones.
[7:50] People are very connected and connected in a way that supports
[7:54] their health.
[7:54] SPEAKER_00: In Okinawa, the term is moai.
[7:57] SPEAKER_00: And then they all have a sense of purpose.
[7:59] SPEAKER_00: They all have vocabulary for purpose.
[8:02] SPEAKER_00: And when I came back from the blue,
[8:04] this is 2005 when people thought the secret to longevity is
[8:09] running marathons and
[8:10] SPEAKER_00: eating vitamin E.
[8:12] SPEAKER_00: You know, and both of them have largely been debunked.
[8:14] SPEAKER_00: And Dan Buehner shows up talking about purpose and social connectivity,
[8:19] SPEAKER_00: and people are just rolling their eyes.
[8:21] Well,
[8:21] now we know that loneliness shaves as much as seven years off
[8:25] your life expectancy.
[8:27] And very good studies from the National Institutes on Aging
[8:32] showing that people can
[8:33] articulate their sense of purpose are living seven or eight
[8:36] years longer than
[8:37] SPEAKER_00: people are rudderless.
[8:38] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[8:39] But the overarching,
[8:40] and this is where I think Blue Zones has a fairly unique point
[8:45] of view.
[8:47] SPEAKER_00: These spry 100-year-olds, none of them are trying.
[8:51] SPEAKER_00: None of them are getting on fad diets.
[8:54] None of them are going over to Instagram and ordering the
[8:57] superfood or the supplements.
[8:59] SPEAKER_00: Nobody's running down to Central America for stem cells.
[9:02] or taking rapamycin or metformin or any of these other
[9:07] resveratrol or NAD+,
[9:09] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[9:09] SPEAKER_00: all these things that marketers are telling us are going to anti-age us.
[9:14] SPEAKER_00: They're not trying to do anything.
[9:15] SPEAKER_00: The big insight is this.
[9:18] SPEAKER_00: They just live their lives.
[9:20] SPEAKER_00: And longevity seems to ensue.
[9:23] SPEAKER_00: It's not something they're pursuing.
[9:26] SPEAKER_00: It's something that ensues from the right environment.
[9:29] And for the last 15 or so years,
[9:32] I started a company that now has 300 employees.
[9:36] And we get hired by insurance companies to go into entire
[9:41] cities and change the
[9:43] SPEAKER_00: environment to set people up
[9:46] SPEAKER_00: to do the things that you write about in your book that we know,
[9:50] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[9:52] lowers your chances of getting the diseases that we can avoid
[9:56] that foreshorten our
[9:57] SPEAKER_00: lives.
[9:58] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[9:58] SPEAKER_01: And I want to do,
[9:59] SPEAKER_01: I want to get to the blue zones,
[10:00] SPEAKER_01: uh,
[10:00] SPEAKER_01: company you set up in a,
[10:02] SPEAKER_01: in a bit,
[10:02] SPEAKER_01: just so we finish up this part.
[10:05] SPEAKER_01: Um,
[10:06] SPEAKER_01: the one blue zone,
[10:07] SPEAKER_01: uh,
[10:08] SPEAKER_01: Loma Linda,
[10:09] SPEAKER_01: there was some question about,
[10:11] SPEAKER_01: Oh,
[10:11] SPEAKER_01: well the national geographic wanted you to have a U S,
[10:14] SPEAKER_01: uh,
[10:16] SPEAKER_01: um, blue zone.
[10:17] SPEAKER_01: Is there anything to that or is it really stand up?
[10:21] SPEAKER_00: Uh, okay, both.
[10:23] So when I came up with the worldwide idea of blue zones,
[10:27] there was no standard.
[10:29] SPEAKER_00: Um,
[10:29] SPEAKER_00: right now,
[10:30] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[10:30] SPEAKER_00: jail Shansky and a team of,
[10:32] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[10:33] SPEAKER_00: of demographers are,
[10:35] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[10:35] SPEAKER_00: are,
[10:36] SPEAKER_00: um,
[10:37] SPEAKER_00: for the first time ever,
[10:38] SPEAKER_00: really,
[10:38] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[10:39] SPEAKER_00: coming up with an international,
[10:42] SPEAKER_00: um,
[10:43] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[10:44] SPEAKER_00: metric for the threshold of blue zone.
[10:47] It turns out the blue zones were all,
[10:50] you know,
[10:51] what,
[10:51] what I said they were.
[10:52] SPEAKER_00: Um,
[10:53] SPEAKER_00: but,
[10:53] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[10:55] SPEAKER_00: the Adventist is different and,
[10:57] SPEAKER_00: and,
[10:58] SPEAKER_00: and you're right at pointing that out the,
[11:00] SPEAKER_00: um,
[11:01] all the other blue zones are geographically defined and the
[11:04] seventh day Adventists
[11:05] SPEAKER_00: are more kind of a subculture.
[11:07] SPEAKER_00: And I relied on,
[11:11] SPEAKER_00: on the Adventist health study that was comparing these Adventists,
[11:16] SPEAKER_00: the Adventists as a people to average Americans.
[11:20] SPEAKER_00: And they,
[11:21] SPEAKER_00: and they,
[11:22] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[11:23] SPEAKER_00: were by that metric,
[11:25] SPEAKER_00: the longest lived Americans,
[11:27] SPEAKER_00: but it's a slightly different standard than the other four blue zones.
[11:30] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it depends on what you want to split hairs.
[11:34] SPEAKER_00: Um,
[11:35] SPEAKER_00: Is it the same standard?
[11:36] SPEAKER_00: No.
[11:37] SPEAKER_00: Do they live measurably longer?
[11:39] SPEAKER_00: Yes.
[11:40] SPEAKER_00: And at the time, I was using the best available data.
[11:44] SPEAKER_00: As better data comes on board,
[11:46] SPEAKER_00: we may see some changes,
[11:48] SPEAKER_00: but I'll stand by my research for when I was doing it in 2003 and 2004.
[11:54] SPEAKER_00: Okay.
[11:56] SPEAKER_01: Now, more recently, a couple of the blue zones have shown changes.
[12:02] SPEAKER_01: I think your colleague wrote about that in
[12:05] Costa Rica,
[12:07] as well as the Okinawa,
[12:10] where the demographics are changing and they're fading.
[12:14] SPEAKER_01: Can you comment about,
[12:16] SPEAKER_01: are these,
[12:17] SPEAKER_01: because of the changes that are occurring,
[12:18] SPEAKER_01: that blue zones that were originally,
[12:22] SPEAKER_01: as you saw them over time,
[12:24] SPEAKER_01: having erosion or changes that don't support where they were originally?
[12:30] SPEAKER_01: Yes.
[12:30] SPEAKER_00: Yes.
[12:32] SPEAKER_00: So as soon as the American diet arrives,
[12:37] SPEAKER_00: as soon as the automobile and social media,
[12:41] SPEAKER_00: their longevity goes out the back door.
[12:46] SPEAKER_00: You mentioned Costa Rica.
[12:49] SPEAKER_00: When I first arrived in 2006,
[12:51] SPEAKER_00: there were no Burger Kings or McDonald's or KFCs,
[12:57] SPEAKER_00: limited salty snacks and that sort of thing.
[13:02] SPEAKER_00: And now a tsunami of that junk food has hit.
[13:06] SPEAKER_00: And sure enough,
[13:07] the chronic disease load is starting to mirror what we have in
[13:11] the United States
[13:12] SPEAKER_00: because as soon as they start eating like an American,
[13:14] SPEAKER_00: they start blowing up like an American.
[13:16] SPEAKER_00: And the blue zone in Costa Rica has shrunk by a factor of five.
[13:29] And the corrosive impacts of modernization is hitting all blue
[13:39] zones,
[13:39] some worse than others.
[13:42] SPEAKER_00: And it appears what's happening is there's kind of a sweet spot.
[13:48] People born between about 1890 and 1940 are the ones who are
[13:54] making it to 100 at
[13:55] SPEAKER_00: the highest proportion.
[13:56] SPEAKER_00: Why is that?
[13:57] SPEAKER_00: Because people born between 1890...
[14:01] SPEAKER_00: did not have the benefit of vaccinations and antibiotics.
[14:06] SPEAKER_00: And their lives were often foreshortened by infectious diseases.
[14:11] SPEAKER_00: You know,
[14:11] SPEAKER_00: you step on a nail or an abscess tooth and you get an infection,
[14:14] SPEAKER_00: you're dead before penicillin or cholera or malaria or
[14:27] SPEAKER_00: tuberculosis.
[14:28] SPEAKER_00: And it goes on and on.
[14:29] And the medical advancements that came along in the 30s and 40s
[14:35] and 50s are what
[14:37] SPEAKER_00: enabled life expectancy and people to survive these infectious diseases.
[14:41] SPEAKER_00: But then what happens in about
[14:43] SPEAKER_00: beginning mostly at the end of the 60s,
[14:46] SPEAKER_00: 70s,
[14:47] SPEAKER_00: is all the processed foods,
[14:50] SPEAKER_00: the glut of grains and the ensuing glut of crappy meat,
[14:55] SPEAKER_00: feedlot meat.
[14:57] SPEAKER_00: You see since about 1980,
[15:00] SPEAKER_00: the rate of obesity, uh, about triples compared to what it was today.
[15:05] SPEAKER_00: And,
[15:06] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[15:06] SPEAKER_00: the number of middle-aged Americans suffering from,
[15:09] SPEAKER_00: or all over the world suffering from chronic disease about doubles.
[15:13] SPEAKER_00: Well, that's happening in the blue zones too.
[15:15] SPEAKER_00: So people born after 1940,
[15:18] SPEAKER_00: they're subject,
[15:19] SPEAKER_00: they're subjected more heavily to this,
[15:22] SPEAKER_00: this sort of American,
[15:23] SPEAKER_00: the,
[15:23] SPEAKER_00: these,
[15:24] SPEAKER_00: the scourges of modernization,
[15:25] SPEAKER_00: um,
[15:26] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[15:27] That said,
[15:28] I can tell you,
[15:29] number one,
[15:31] the cluster of characteristics that got this cohort.
[15:36] Remember,
[15:37] these people are with an average set of genes,
[15:38] the cohort born between 1890 and 1940.
[15:42] SPEAKER_00: That cluster of characteristics,
[15:44] SPEAKER_00: we identified that,
[15:46] SPEAKER_00: and that would work just as well today as it worked back then.
[15:50] And number two,
[15:51] luzones,
[15:52] most of them are still the longest-lived dairies in the world.
[15:56] SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
[15:57] SPEAKER_01: Okay,
[15:57] SPEAKER_01: now,
[15:59] SPEAKER_01: you started this really in a big way,
[16:03] SPEAKER_01: you know,
[16:03] SPEAKER_01: 2005,
[16:03] SPEAKER_01: and now we're at the 20-year anniversary.
[16:06] SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you would call it the 20-year anniversary,
[16:09] SPEAKER_01: but for the sake of keeping track of time,
[16:12] SPEAKER_01: I'll say that.
[16:13] And here,
[16:15] what I want to,
[16:16] I guess you're familiar with the tall poppy syndrome?
[16:20] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[16:21] SPEAKER_01: Kind of became it.
[16:22] SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
[16:22] SPEAKER_00: The tall poppy gets chopped down?
[16:24] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you became the tall.
[16:27] SPEAKER_01: you know, speaking for extreme longevity and finding these places.
[16:30] And you've done some work with,
[16:32] what,
[16:32] nine books and Netflix series,
[16:35] documentary series.
[16:36] SPEAKER_01: And you're just a very charismatic, great communicator, storyteller.
[16:41] SPEAKER_01: And everything was kind of cool.
[16:42] SPEAKER_01: And then starting around,
[16:44] SPEAKER_01: except for this one guy we'll talk about,
[16:45] SPEAKER_01: this guy,
[16:46] SPEAKER_01: Saul Newman,
[16:47] SPEAKER_01: where he started in 2019.
[16:49] SPEAKER_01: And by the way, I think he's tried to get this preprint published
[16:54] SPEAKER_01: nine times revised to the British Medical Journal,
[16:58] SPEAKER_01: Public Health,
[16:59] SPEAKER_01: and he couldn't get it published.
[17:00] SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of interesting by itself.
[17:03] SPEAKER_01: And as you know,
[17:05] SPEAKER_01: he wrote a,
[17:06] SPEAKER_01: this is an Australian biologist who lives in Europe,
[17:10] SPEAKER_01: I guess,
[17:10] SPEAKER_01: or in the UK,
[17:12] SPEAKER_01: Saul Newman.
[17:13] He has a book coming out in June called Morbid,
[17:17] Debunking Modern Longevity Science.
[17:20] SPEAKER_01: And he wrote a New York Times op-ed in January this year,
[17:24] where he said the data on extreme longevity is rotten from the
[17:27] inside out.
[17:28] SPEAKER_01: And it's not just about blue zones.
[17:29] SPEAKER_01: He's taken on anything about longevity here.
[17:32] SPEAKER_01: And as you may recall,
[17:33] SPEAKER_01: nothing related to the Blue Zones,
[17:35] SPEAKER_01: but back in 2020,
[17:37] SPEAKER_01: the woman who lived the longest,
[17:40] SPEAKER_01: 122-year-old.
[17:42] SPEAKER_00: Jean-Marie Calmet.
[17:43] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[17:44] SPEAKER_01: There was an article about her in The New Yorker.
[17:47] SPEAKER_01: I read it.
[17:48] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[17:48] SPEAKER_01: Is this fraud or is it real?
[17:50] SPEAKER_01: And so anyway,
[17:51] SPEAKER_01: so here things were kind of quiet except for this one guy,
[17:54] SPEAKER_01: Saul Newman,
[17:55] SPEAKER_01: who is still not,
[17:56] SPEAKER_01: you know,
[17:56] SPEAKER_01: he's still on it.
[17:57] SPEAKER_01: And he's,
[17:58] he's claiming that everything is fraudulent and pension fraud
[18:02] and the data aren't
[18:03] SPEAKER_01: real,
[18:03] SPEAKER_01: whatnot.
[18:04] SPEAKER_01: Okay.
[18:05] SPEAKER_01: But then in late 23 and 24,
[18:08] SPEAKER_01: We started seeing these articles,
[18:10] SPEAKER_01: like in The Economist,
[18:11] SPEAKER_01: Science,
[18:12] SPEAKER_01: Nature,
[18:12] SPEAKER_01: New Republic,
[18:14] SPEAKER_01: that were starting to challenge this data about the blue zone,
[18:17] SPEAKER_01: saying,
[18:18] SPEAKER_01: oh,
[18:18] SPEAKER_01: you know what?
[18:19] SPEAKER_01: They didn't verify birth certificates.
[18:22] And of course,
[18:23] your colleagues like Michelle Poulin wrote a paper,
[18:27] hey,
[18:28] you know what?
[18:29] SPEAKER_01: We went through this really rigorously with three different layers.
[18:33] SPEAKER_01: How do we get that?
[18:34] SPEAKER_01: Can you just get that on track?
[18:36] Because there were a bunch of articles that questioned the
[18:39] veracity of the data of
[18:42] SPEAKER_01: the age of the people.
[18:43] SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
[18:44] SPEAKER_00: So first of all,
[18:45] SPEAKER_00: there's only one critic,
[18:46] SPEAKER_00: and he's the guy you mentioned,
[18:49] SPEAKER_00: who is a plant scientist,
[18:50] SPEAKER_00: no training in demography,
[18:52] SPEAKER_00: and a real zeal for self-promotion and attention.
[18:56] SPEAKER_00: As far as we can tell,
[18:57] the only thing he's done of substance was to line up a number
[19:01] of misrepresentations
[19:03] SPEAKER_00: to make us look bad.
[19:05] SPEAKER_00: He's never been to a blue zone.
[19:06] SPEAKER_00: And you can talk to any one of a dozen demographers.
[19:11] SPEAKER_00: Some have worked in the blue zone.
[19:13] SPEAKER_00: Demographers,
[19:13] SPEAKER_00: these are scientists who actually do this work,
[19:16] SPEAKER_00: who've seen the birth records,
[19:17] SPEAKER_00: who've seen the death records.
[19:19] Sal quite rightly points out that there is a prefixer in Japan
[19:24] where there was a couple hundred
[19:28] SPEAKER_00: false birth certificates.
[19:30] And he tries to make the false equivalency that if it happened
[19:35] someplace else in
[19:35] SPEAKER_00: Japan,
[19:36] SPEAKER_00: it had to happen in Okinawa.
[19:38] SPEAKER_00: But if you look at that very article,
[19:42] SPEAKER_00: It lists the number of fraudulent birth certificates in Okinawa as zero.
[19:46] SPEAKER_00: So he selectively picks a data point to make this argument.
[19:55] He correctly points out that in Sardinia there's high climb
[19:59] rate and there's a lot of poverty.
[20:04] but he doesn't bother to mention that there's 1.6 million
[20:10] people in Sardinia and
[20:11] SPEAKER_00: the blue zone consists of six villages in only one area.
[20:16] SPEAKER_00: And we make no claims on poverty or education.
[20:20] We just simply looked at birth records going back to 1860 and
[20:26] then followed
[20:27] SPEAKER_00: everybody who made it to 90 or older.
[20:30] SPEAKER_00: and counted them up and compared them to national standards.
[20:33] SPEAKER_00: And it's not just me.
[20:35] Actually,
[20:35] I just report on what real demographers in peer-reviewed
[20:40] journals have done.
[20:42] SPEAKER_00: And I think you're going to see another...
[20:46] spate of very high-profile journals writing articles about blue
[20:51] zones confirming
[20:52] SPEAKER_00: all the ages have been verified.
[20:55] SPEAKER_00: You know, every single birth, the process is we...
[21:03] SPEAKER_00: We find a birth that has lived over age 90.
[21:09] SPEAKER_00: They're in the civil record.
[21:13] Then we check the birth records and then the death records and
[21:15] make sure those dates line up.
[21:17] SPEAKER_00: And then to make double sure,
[21:19] SPEAKER_00: we go over to the church and we look at the baptismal record,
[21:22] SPEAKER_00: which is usually recorded a day after the birth,
[21:25] SPEAKER_00: and then the death record.
[21:26] SPEAKER_00: The church likes to keep track of this too.
[21:28] SPEAKER_00: So then we can have two sources of verification.
[21:31] SPEAKER_00: Then we go into the cemetery.
[21:34] SPEAKER_00: And make sure that date.
[21:36] SPEAKER_00: It's tedious, three years of work.
[21:39] And then,
[21:40] by the way,
[21:40] if we can't find the death certificate,
[21:43] we go knock on the door.
[21:44] And if they're opening the door and making us tea,
[21:46] we can be pretty sure they're alive.
[21:49] SPEAKER_00: But we only have one case that we know of.
[21:54] SPEAKER_00: of 110 year old person where her, her, um, data was recorded wrongly.
[22:02] SPEAKER_00: And we admitted that we admit it there,
[22:04] SPEAKER_00: there is one,
[22:04] SPEAKER_00: but,
[22:05] SPEAKER_00: but,
[22:05] SPEAKER_00: um,
[22:06] SPEAKER_00: the,
[22:06] SPEAKER_00: the,
[22:07] SPEAKER_00: the data is very strong and,
[22:09] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[22:10] SPEAKER_00: an easy way to get a lot of attention to yourself is to,
[22:13] SPEAKER_00: um,
[22:14] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[22:15] SPEAKER_00: Layer a number of misrepresentations,
[22:17] SPEAKER_00: make a big claim that takes somebody down the tall poppy,
[22:21] SPEAKER_00: as you put it.
[22:22] SPEAKER_00: But it was all misrepresentations.
[22:28] SPEAKER_01: Why do you think,
[22:29] SPEAKER_01: you know,
[22:30] SPEAKER_01: you got this thing going,
[22:32] SPEAKER_01: you know,
[22:33] SPEAKER_01: 2005 or so,
[22:34] SPEAKER_01: and there wasn't really anybody except for this one guy.
[22:37] SPEAKER_01: And then all these articles sprung out.
[22:39] SPEAKER_00: But all the articles are from that one guy.
[22:41] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[22:42] SPEAKER_00: If you look at every article,
[22:44] SPEAKER_00: all they do is quote this one guy who tried really hard to get attention.
[22:50] SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
[22:50] SPEAKER_01: well,
[22:50] they sometimes bring up other demographers like Medford or
[22:54] Vopel or whatever,
[22:55] SPEAKER_01: but you're right.
[22:56] SPEAKER_01: It's clearly Newman.
[22:57] SPEAKER_01: I just wondered why it took so long for them to even question.
[23:00] SPEAKER_01: I mean,
[23:00] SPEAKER_01: because Newman's first preprint,
[23:03] SPEAKER_01: which he kept revising,
[23:04] SPEAKER_01: was back in six years ago,
[23:06] SPEAKER_01: you know,
[23:06] SPEAKER_01: and nothing really showed up in terms of questioning stuff until when...
[23:11] SPEAKER_00: Well,
[23:11] SPEAKER_00: he was...
[23:14] SPEAKER_00: article then was picked up by a satirical award, basically comedy.
[23:21] SPEAKER_00: And then the media picked it up.
[23:24] SPEAKER_01: Ah, that must have been it.
[23:25] SPEAKER_01: Okay, got it.
[23:26] SPEAKER_01: All right,
[23:26] SPEAKER_01: now,
[23:27] let's go to the Blue Zone LLC that you started because the
[23:32] lessons you got from
[23:33] SPEAKER_01: these Blue Zones,
[23:34] SPEAKER_01: you wanted to export or import to communities.
[23:38] SPEAKER_01: And I think now you have,
[23:41] SPEAKER_01: well,
[23:42] SPEAKER_01: at last count,
[23:43] SPEAKER_01: you can revise this,
[23:44] SPEAKER_01: but you've reached over 4 million people,
[23:47] SPEAKER_01: 70 different communities around the country.
[23:51] SPEAKER_01: That's in the U.S.
[23:52] SPEAKER_01: alone, right?
[23:53] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[23:54] SPEAKER_00: We only work in the U.S.
[23:55] SPEAKER_00: right now.
[23:56] SPEAKER_00: So the central premise is if you try to get a million people,
[24:03] SPEAKER_00: say,
[24:03] SPEAKER_00: to change your behavior,
[24:05] you can spend a few billion dollars on advertising or
[24:08] incentives or education,
[24:11] SPEAKER_00: and most of that money will go right down the toilet.
[24:14] SPEAKER_00: It's very hard to convince people to...
[24:16] SPEAKER_00: of a certain way to eat and change their,
[24:19] SPEAKER_00: but if you change their environment,
[24:21] SPEAKER_00: you can engineer their unconscious decisions.
[24:24] And there are many,
[24:25] many examples of shaping people's environments and better
[24:29] behaviors ensue.
[24:30] SPEAKER_00: I mean,
[24:31] SPEAKER_00: the most obvious one is if you want people to walk more,
[24:36] SPEAKER_00: you pass something called a complete streets policy bundle for a city,
[24:39] SPEAKER_00: and you can get 20% more people walking.
[24:42] SPEAKER_00: And we see this very clearly comparing, for example,
[24:46] SPEAKER_00: Um, uh, uh, Houston, Texas with, uh, Boulder, Colorado, a Boulder.
[24:54] SPEAKER_00: It's very easy to walk and bike, uh, Houston.
[24:57] SPEAKER_00: It's almost impossible or,
[24:59] SPEAKER_00: um,
[25:00] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[25:00] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[25:01] SPEAKER_00: Phoenix,
[25:01] SPEAKER_00: Arizona with,
[25:03] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[25:03] SPEAKER_00: Santa Barbara or Asheville with,
[25:06] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[25:06] SPEAKER_00: Miami,
[25:07] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[25:07] SPEAKER_00: In those cities,
[25:09] the city council has decided to prioritize the pedestrian over
[25:16] motorists and
[25:17] SPEAKER_00: traffic.
[25:18] So what our company does,
[25:20] Blue Zones LLC,
[25:21] is we go into a city and we spend full time.
[25:25] SPEAKER_00: I have a staff.
[25:26] SPEAKER_00: Let's say we came into San Diego.
[25:28] SPEAKER_00: I probably have 20 full time people working for five years working.
[25:33] who would work with city council to adopt policies that favor
[25:37] healthy food over
[25:38] SPEAKER_00: junk food and junk food marketing,
[25:40] SPEAKER_00: to favor the pedestrian over the motorist,
[25:42] SPEAKER_00: to favor the nonsmoker over the smoker.
[25:45] And then we'd certify restaurants,
[25:48] grocery stores,
[25:49] workplaces,
[25:50] schools,
[25:50] and churches that
[25:52] optimize their policies and their designs so people are nudged
[25:56] into moving more and
[25:57] SPEAKER_00: eating better and socializing more.
[25:59] SPEAKER_00: Remember, we're not trying to convince people.
[26:01] SPEAKER_00: We're just setting them up for success.
[26:04] SPEAKER_00: And then we help individuals shape social circles.
[26:08] SPEAKER_00: We call them MOIs.
[26:10] SPEAKER_00: We give them purpose workshops and
[26:12] SPEAKER_00: And then we get them volunteering.
[26:14] SPEAKER_00: Volunteers have better health outcomes over time than non-volunteers.
[26:20] And then we give them some consultation on how to shape their
[26:24] kitchens and their
[26:25] SPEAKER_00: homes so they're eating better mindlessly and moving more mindlessly.
[26:31] SPEAKER_00: And we get paid when we lower health care costs and lower BMI.
[26:37] SPEAKER_00: And Gallup measures this.
[26:39] SPEAKER_00: Third party, we don't.
[26:41] SPEAKER_00: And hospital systems pay us.
[26:44] And we've been fantastically successful at lowering BMI at the
[26:50] population level.
[26:51] SPEAKER_00: We've never had a failure.
[26:53] And we do better in some cities than others,
[26:55] but it keeps growing every year.
[26:58] SPEAKER_00: And this is the DNA that comes directly from
[27:02] SPEAKER_00: from places like Sardinia and Okinawa.
[27:06] SPEAKER_00: And it's not getting people to take a pill or not promising them that,
[27:11] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[27:11] shoot yourself up with plasma of a younger person or stem cells
[27:15] is going to change.
[27:16] SPEAKER_00: It simply sets them up for success when right now our food system and our
[27:22] SPEAKER_00: transportation system sets us up for sloth and sickness.
[27:28] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're not kidding.
[27:29] SPEAKER_01: I would agree with that.
[27:31] SPEAKER_01: Now,
[27:32] SPEAKER_01: here I'm in San Diego,
[27:34] SPEAKER_01: and we work closely with San Diego State University,
[27:37] SPEAKER_01: a very large university,
[27:39] SPEAKER_01: you may know.
[27:40] SPEAKER_01: And Blue Zones,
[27:41] SPEAKER_01: your son,
[27:42] SPEAKER_01: I think,
[27:43] SPEAKER_01: Danny,
[27:44] SPEAKER_01: Dan Buettner Jr.,
[27:46] SPEAKER_01: he's the executive vice president of Blue Zones LLC.
[27:49] SPEAKER_01: He, I think, was just making a pitch with colleagues and
[27:53] SPEAKER_01: for San Diego State to become a Blue Zone community.
[27:56] SPEAKER_01: So you're also going to universities, not just cities?
[28:00] SPEAKER_00: Yes, and we've been successful in several universities.
[28:03] SPEAKER_00: You know, we don't really pitch.
[28:06] SPEAKER_00: We've been, it's the other way around.
[28:08] SPEAKER_00: We have probably 700 cities have asked us,
[28:11] SPEAKER_00: and we just don't have the capacity,
[28:13] SPEAKER_00: and several universities.
[28:15] So when we go into a university,
[28:17] we're going to work with the cafeteria department,
[28:20] SPEAKER_00: to help them favor whole plant-based food over junk food.
[28:24] SPEAKER_00: And if they are selling junk food,
[28:25] SPEAKER_00: we're going to,
[28:26] SPEAKER_00: in many cases,
[28:27] we're successful in convincing them to lower the price of the
[28:30] healthy food and then
[28:35] SPEAKER_00: we'll raise the price of the burgers and fries and pizzas.
[28:40] SPEAKER_00: And then subsidize the unhealthy food.
[28:43] SPEAKER_00: Subsidize the healthy food, rather.
[28:46] SPEAKER_00: Connect freshmen when they come in.
[28:50] And set up the campus so people are moving mindlessly,
[28:54] get more physical activity.
[28:56] SPEAKER_00: Generally take that approach, and it works.
[28:59] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[28:59] No,
[28:59] I didn't realize you'd gone to any universities until it was
[29:02] just down the...
[29:02] SPEAKER_01: road for me.
[29:03] SPEAKER_01: So that was interesting.
[29:06] SPEAKER_01: There's other things besides the Blue Zone company, LLC.
[29:11] SPEAKER_01: So, you know, recently I came across a Delta flight.
[29:15] SPEAKER_01: You have nothing to do with this.
[29:17] SPEAKER_01: Delta flight, the first nonstop to a Blue Zone, you know.
[29:21] SPEAKER_00: I didn't love that.
[29:23] SPEAKER_01: There's also Blue Zone Vacations.
[29:25] There's Blue Zone foods that are certified,
[29:28] like Blue Zone beans and iced tea.
[29:32] SPEAKER_00: Well,
[29:32] SPEAKER_00: what I'm most proud of,
[29:34] SPEAKER_00: we do have Blue Zone Kitchen frozen food,
[29:37] SPEAKER_00: which is 100% whole food plant-based.
[29:40] SPEAKER_00: It's in 4,000 grocery stores.
[29:41] SPEAKER_00: And that I did oversee.
[29:43] SPEAKER_00: That I'm very proud of.
[29:45] We've sold two million meals and figured we've saved about 50
[29:50] life years in just
[29:51] moving people away from the standard American diet to eating
[29:55] these two million
[29:56] SPEAKER_00: whole food plant-based meals.
[29:58] SPEAKER_00: And I'm very proud of that.
[29:59] SPEAKER_00: That other stuff I have nothing to do with.
[30:02] SPEAKER_00: It's a brand that people want to slap on whatever they do.
[30:06] SPEAKER_00: And we fight to try to minimize that.
[30:09] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I, I get that.
[30:11] I mean,
[30:11] you've got a brand and people can,
[30:13] you know,
[30:14] use that to their own.
[30:15] SPEAKER_01: I mean, when Delta airlines use it, it's kind of interesting.
[30:18] SPEAKER_01: Right.
[30:19] SPEAKER_01: But now the other thing on the,
[30:20] SPEAKER_01: when the new Republic was,
[30:22] SPEAKER_01: you know,
[30:22] SPEAKER_01: taking shots,
[30:23] SPEAKER_01: they said,
[30:24] SPEAKER_01: oh,
[30:24] SPEAKER_01: well,
[30:25] SPEAKER_01: uh,
[30:25] SPEAKER_01: well,
[30:26] SPEAKER_01: Mark,
[30:26] SPEAKER_01: uh,
[30:26] SPEAKER_01: Iowa,
[30:28] SPEAKER_01: uh,
[30:28] SPEAKER_01: blue cross blue shield,
[30:29] SPEAKER_01: they paid $25 million for sort of get certified.
[30:33] SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that's true.
[30:35] SPEAKER_01: Um,
[30:36] And they also brought up this Miami luxury tower of Blue Zone
[30:41] with plastic surgery
[30:42] SPEAKER_01: for $600 million.
[30:44] SPEAKER_01: I don't know if they just invented this stuff.
[30:46] SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
[30:47] SPEAKER_01: Is this just trying to take shots at this whole thing?
[30:52] SPEAKER_00: Well...
[30:54] SPEAKER_00: You know, we worked with Wellmark in Iowa, and they're very pleased.
[30:58] SPEAKER_00: So we don't just give certification.
[31:02] SPEAKER_00: No, that's wrong, 100% wrong.
[31:06] SPEAKER_00: We sent in a full-time team statewide for five years.
[31:10] SPEAKER_00: And in not every one of their cities,
[31:13] SPEAKER_00: but in the 10 cities we worked in,
[31:15] SPEAKER_00: almost every one of them saw drops in BMI.
[31:17] SPEAKER_00: Wow.
[31:18] SPEAKER_00: Um, and they're very happy with it.
[31:20] SPEAKER_00: It's just, we had a five-year contract and it ended.
[31:23] SPEAKER_00: Um,
[31:24] SPEAKER_00: the,
[31:24] SPEAKER_00: um,
[31:25] SPEAKER_00: the Miami,
[31:27] SPEAKER_00: I sold blue zones five years ago and,
[31:30] SPEAKER_00: um,
[31:30] SPEAKER_00: the new buyer made this deal,
[31:33] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[31:34] SPEAKER_00: which I objected to.
[31:35] SPEAKER_00: I couldn't help it.
[31:36] And,
[31:36] uh,
[31:38] in Miami and it,
[31:39] it did not,
[31:40] it did not,
[31:41] it was not the right use of the brand.
[31:43] SPEAKER_00: Um, it was misinterpreted and we ended it as soon as we could.
[31:48] SPEAKER_00: So,
[31:48] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[31:49] SPEAKER_00: you can't,
[31:50] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[31:50] SPEAKER_00: you can't hit a home run every time you step up to base and,
[31:53] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[31:53] SPEAKER_00: we tried something new with them and,
[31:57] SPEAKER_00: and then they,
[31:58] SPEAKER_00: they,
[31:58] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[31:59] SPEAKER_00: took liberties with how they use the brand.
[32:01] SPEAKER_00: And we never, we never said they could use it for, uh,
[32:05] SPEAKER_00: surgeries or anti-aging.
[32:06] The idea was to take a high rise in Miami and change the
[32:11] defaults so that people
[32:14] were mindlessly making better food decisions and moving more
[32:17] and connecting more.
[32:18] And they took the brand and used it in a way we didn't,
[32:22] we didn't authorize.
[32:24] SPEAKER_00: And we got in a big, um, uh, um, uh, uh, a big sort of argument and, um,
[32:31] SPEAKER_00: eventually we got them to stop using the brand.
[32:35] SPEAKER_00: But, you know, nobody's perfect and there was no harm done.
[32:41] SPEAKER_01: Now,
[32:42] you mentioned how intensive you get a whole force to go for
[32:46] five years to these
[32:47] SPEAKER_01: communities or universities.
[32:49] Is there like a light version that every other place could use
[32:52] that wouldn't be as
[32:54] SPEAKER_01: intense or as expensive?
[32:56] SPEAKER_01: And, you know, whether or not they get certified?
[32:59] SPEAKER_00: No.
[32:59] SPEAKER_00: The thing is, people...
[33:02] SPEAKER_00: every other time it's been tried and the national institutes on,
[33:06] SPEAKER_00: on,
[33:06] SPEAKER_00: on health has actually financed six,
[33:11] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[33:11] SPEAKER_00: heart healthy projects in the eighties.
[33:13] SPEAKER_00: I actually know the guy who ran it.
[33:14] SPEAKER_00: His name is Henry Blackburn.
[33:16] SPEAKER_01: Oh, I know Henry.
[33:17] SPEAKER_01: Sure.
[33:17] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[33:18] SPEAKER_00: He just turned a hundred, by the way.
[33:19] SPEAKER_00: Um, he still is still friend of mine in Minnesota.
[33:23] SPEAKER_00: Um,
[33:25] What happens,
[33:27] Eric,
[33:28] is you get sort of the health equivalent of the Hawthorne
[33:31] effect.
[33:33] When people are paying attention and the cameras are rolling
[33:37] and the experts are
[33:38] SPEAKER_00: there and people kind of change their behavior.
[33:40] SPEAKER_00: But a year later, it just goes back to baseline.
[33:44] SPEAKER_00: And my teams, their job is to make permanent changes to the environment.
[33:50] SPEAKER_00: This takes a long time.
[33:52] SPEAKER_00: So we hire well-trained people for five years.
[33:58] SPEAKER_00: And there are a number of what we call process metrics.
[34:02] SPEAKER_00: So what would be an example process metric?
[34:04] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[34:05] The city's got to pass between six and eight policies that
[34:08] favor healthy food over
[34:09] SPEAKER_00: junk food,
[34:10] another six to eight policies that favor the pedestrian over
[34:13] the motorist,
[34:14] SPEAKER_00: and another six policies that favor the non-smoker over the smoker.
[34:20] SPEAKER_00: So that might take three or four years.
[34:22] SPEAKER_00: Then in order to get certification,
[34:25] SPEAKER_00: Gallup measures called the Well-Being Index,
[34:28] SPEAKER_00: WBI,
[34:29] SPEAKER_00: it's 20 different facets of
[34:32] SPEAKER_00: And we need to see improvement.
[34:35] SPEAKER_00: So that's what we call our outcome metrics.
[34:38] SPEAKER_00: So they have to check the boxes and the city has to get healthier.
[34:42] SPEAKER_00: Then it's Blue Zone certified.
[34:45] SPEAKER_00: So we don't go to any cities and say,
[34:48] SPEAKER_00: attaboy,
[34:49] SPEAKER_00: give us money and we'll give you Blue Zone certification.
[34:52] SPEAKER_00: We are a solution.
[34:54] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[34:54] SPEAKER_01: Now,
[34:54] SPEAKER_01: in fact,
[34:55] SPEAKER_01: in the Netflix documentary,
[34:59] SPEAKER_01: you,
[34:59] SPEAKER_01: I think,
[35:00] SPEAKER_01: went through the Minnesota,
[35:02] SPEAKER_01: is it Albert Lowe?
[35:03] SPEAKER_00: Albert Lee.
[35:03] SPEAKER_00: They're still a blue zone 15 years later.
[35:05] SPEAKER_00: They're still working on it.
[35:07] And I was really impressed because you projected from the
[35:10] Gallup poll that it was
[35:12] SPEAKER_01: like a three-year life expectancy increase.
[35:16] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[35:17] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[35:18] SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah.
[35:18] SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I know you were generous with quoting all the
[35:24] SPEAKER_00: places that bad-mouthed us,
[35:26] SPEAKER_00: but you didn't manage to cite the Newsweek article written by Dr.
[35:31] Walter Willett that said he's never seen a more successful
[35:35] population health
[35:36] SPEAKER_00: intervention.
[35:36] He called our results remarkable,
[35:38] and he looked at the data pretty carefully.
[35:41] So I know you get a lot more people listening when you're
[35:45] bad-mouthed than you are.
[35:47] SPEAKER_01: Well, I want to be fair and balanced, and Walter...
[35:52] SPEAKER_01: You know, as is Henry Blackburn.
[35:54] SPEAKER_01: What I wanted to get at, though, is you've been very successful.
[35:58] SPEAKER_01: And you've had a 20-plus year run on this.
[36:00] SPEAKER_01: And that last thing I wanted to get to is, you know, where you go next.
[36:05] SPEAKER_01: And by the way,
[36:06] SPEAKER_01: you know,
[36:06] you and others have assessed other parts of the world and
[36:10] rejected them as Blue
[36:11] SPEAKER_01: Zones.
[36:11] SPEAKER_01: They didn't cut it.
[36:12] SPEAKER_01: They didn't have the extreme longevity index.
[36:14] So it isn't like you're this promiscuous entity that would call
[36:17] a place a blue zone.
[36:19] SPEAKER_01: And there's some differences in opinion.
[36:21] SPEAKER_01: Like,
[36:21] SPEAKER_01: for example,
[36:21] SPEAKER_01: I think you've made Singapore classified it as a blue zone,
[36:28] SPEAKER_01: whereas Michel Poulain has a different place.
[36:32] SPEAKER_01: I forgot which one that he thinks is a blue zone.
[36:34] SPEAKER_00: Martinique.
[36:36] SPEAKER_00: Well, that will be definitively solved within six months.
[36:45] SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you, I can't discuss it.
[36:48] SPEAKER_00: So I did get seven National Geographic grants.
[36:52] SPEAKER_00: National Geographic does not give grants casually, and I led teams.
[36:58] SPEAKER_00: And those grants yielded the Ikaria Greece and the Costa Rica Blue Zones.
[37:04] SPEAKER_00: But we went to Vilcabamba Valley,
[37:07] SPEAKER_00: Ecuador,
[37:08] SPEAKER_00: and rejected it because there weren't good birth records,
[37:12] SPEAKER_00: exactly as our critics would accuse us of doing.
[37:15] SPEAKER_00: We actually rejected.
[37:19] SPEAKER_00: Similarly, we rejected Cuba.
[37:23] We're pretty sure there's a blue zone there,
[37:25] but we couldn't get the data,
[37:27] so we didn't say it.
[37:29] SPEAKER_00: And we rejected Barbados as well.
[37:32] SPEAKER_00: Um, so those have all been rejected.
[37:34] Uh,
[37:35] uh,
[37:36] the blue zone in,
[37:37] um,
[37:38] Singapore,
[37:39] the Netflix lived to 100 documentary.
[37:43] SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, that for that, we, we, um,
[37:49] SPEAKER_00: created kind of a new class of blue zone.
[37:51] SPEAKER_00: I was careful to call it a new blue zone.
[37:54] SPEAKER_00: And the reason I gave a designation,
[37:56] SPEAKER_00: A,
[37:56] SPEAKER_00: I came up with the concept,
[37:57] SPEAKER_00: so I figured I'd get to do it.
[37:59] SPEAKER_00: It's getting more scientific now.
[38:01] SPEAKER_00: But according to Global Burden of Disease,
[38:04] SPEAKER_00: the IHME,
[38:07] Singapore enjoys the highest health-adjusted life expectancy in
[38:11] the world.
[38:12] SPEAKER_00: about a dozen more years than Americans have.
[38:15] SPEAKER_00: So I thought it was well within reason to recognize them.
[38:20] SPEAKER_00: And by the way, their life expectancies jumped about 25 years since 1960.
[38:23] SPEAKER_00: So what they've done there...
[38:28] SPEAKER_00: largely under the prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew.
[38:31] SPEAKER_00: Lots of foibles, but health improvement isn't one of them there.
[38:36] SPEAKER_00: And I've written a lot about Singapore for National Geographic,
[38:39] SPEAKER_00: and it wasn't a flippant designation.
[38:44] SPEAKER_00: And I was careful to say it's a new blue zone.
[38:47] SPEAKER_00: And by the way, I'm writing a book right now
[38:50] SPEAKER_00: We'll be out in about a year with new Blue Zones, completely new metric.
[38:55] SPEAKER_00: Oh, God.
[38:59] SPEAKER_01: Wow.
[39:01] SPEAKER_01: So there's some more Blue Zones to be announced in the future.
[39:04] SPEAKER_00: A different category of Blue Zones.
[39:07] SPEAKER_01: I see.
[39:07] SPEAKER_01: And where do you want this to go?
[39:09] SPEAKER_01: I mean, obviously, people with a documentary live to 100.
[39:13] SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think you are more interested in health span.
[39:17] SPEAKER_01: I am.
[39:18] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[39:20] SPEAKER_00: Health adjusted life expectancy,
[39:21] SPEAKER_00: which is number of years you expect to live,
[39:24] SPEAKER_00: minus years lost to chronic disease,
[39:26] SPEAKER_00: then minus years lost for major disability.
[39:29] SPEAKER_00: And there's a metric that measures that now.
[39:31] So now why not find places that do it better than any place
[39:35] else and learn from them?
[39:36] SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm focusing on right now.
[39:40] SPEAKER_00: And I'm focusing on working with...
[39:44] SPEAKER_00: As you well know,
[39:45] SPEAKER_00: America's healthcare system incents sickness indirectly,
[39:51] SPEAKER_00: but it really only pays for,
[39:55] SPEAKER_00: for the most part,
[39:56] SPEAKER_00: getting sick people less sick,
[39:59] SPEAKER_00: whether it's heart disease,
[40:00] SPEAKER_00: type 2 diabetes,
[40:01] SPEAKER_00: dementia,
[40:03] SPEAKER_00: cancers.
[40:04] SPEAKER_00: We spend very little on keeping people well in the first place.
[40:08] SPEAKER_00: And what we do for Blue Zone Cities is,
[40:11] our Blue Zone projects,
[40:13] we're trying to support ourselves by keeping people healthy.
[40:17] SPEAKER_00: There's no money for that.
[40:19] SPEAKER_00: There's very little money for that.
[40:21] SPEAKER_00: We are appealing to foundations,
[40:23] SPEAKER_00: to hospital systems,
[40:24] SPEAKER_00: which have a little bit of Medicare and Medicaid incentive to keep their
[40:31] SPEAKER_00: populations healthier.
[40:33] SPEAKER_00: So I'm...
[40:35] maniacal,
[40:37] obsessed with trying to have those teams working more
[40:42] efficiently with less.
[40:44] SPEAKER_00: So instead of having to hire five people for the team,
[40:50] hire one person for the team and get a dozen volunteers who are
[40:55] passionate about
[40:56] SPEAKER_00: this.
[40:56] SPEAKER_00: So there's much more efficient ways to do it.
[41:00] SPEAKER_00: And,
[41:00] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[41:00] SPEAKER_00: by the way,
[41:01] Gallup estimates that our projects have saved about 12 million
[41:05] life years.
[41:07] And I'd like to see the company hit 100 million life years in
[41:11] the next five years.
[41:12] SPEAKER_00: And I think we can do that.
[41:14] SPEAKER_00: But given the financial or economic reality of our healthcare system,
[41:18] SPEAKER_00: it's going to require innovation.
[41:21] SPEAKER_00: It's not AI.
[41:22] SPEAKER_00: It's not pharmaceutical.
[41:24] SPEAKER_00: It's getting people to connect.
[41:26] SPEAKER_00: It's setting up our cities so they're more walkable and bikeable.
[41:30] SPEAKER_00: So the air is cleaner.
[41:32] SPEAKER_00: Bad air, by the way, takes about five years off of our life expectancy.
[41:38] SPEAKER_00: And it is favoring healthy food.
[41:42] And by the way,
[41:42] the healthiest food is peasant food,
[41:45] but making that delicious.
[41:47] SPEAKER_00: And these are really disruptive ideas, right?
[41:51] SPEAKER_00: You know,
[41:51] SPEAKER_00: although your grandma would recognize them,
[41:53] but I believe they can be put to work at the population level
[41:58] and drive real
[41:59] SPEAKER_00: improvement in our health care system.
[42:01] SPEAKER_00: And that's what I'm focused on.
[42:03] SPEAKER_01: You know, one thing you framed it, of course, the U.S.
[42:06] SPEAKER_01: health system is at a real disadvantage because we don't
[42:10] SPEAKER_01: treat people as a population.
[42:12] SPEAKER_01: We have insurance companies and all sorts of gouging and there's no,
[42:16] SPEAKER_01: this make America healthy again line.
[42:18] SPEAKER_01: I mean, come on, help me.
[42:20] SPEAKER_01: But if you go to other countries, you know,
[42:23] SPEAKER_01: the UK,
[42:24] SPEAKER_01: a lot of countries in Europe and Asia and Canada,
[42:27] SPEAKER_01: they have a population health incentive,
[42:29] SPEAKER_01: right?
[42:29] And they would be more likely to adopt the lifestyle factor
[42:34] primacy that basically
[42:37] SPEAKER_01: the things that you're trying to,
[42:39] SPEAKER_01: that you espouse and you try to implement.
[42:41] Do you think a future of the blue zones would be to go to
[42:44] countries where there'd
[42:46] be a lot more receptivity because they do care for their
[42:49] population rather than
[42:50] SPEAKER_01: here in the U.S.?
[42:51] SPEAKER_01: ?
[42:52] SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll tell you the highlight of my summer.
[42:54] SPEAKER_00: King Charles invited me to London.
[42:56] SPEAKER_00: I went to the palace and spent the better part of an afternoon with him.
[43:00] SPEAKER_00: And we're talking about something over there.
[43:04] SPEAKER_00: But to your point, you know, Costa Rica...
[43:09] SPEAKER_00: So Costa Rica,
[43:10] SPEAKER_00: every man,
[43:11] SPEAKER_00: woman,
[43:11] and child in that country has the right to the access of
[43:15] something called a basic
[43:16] SPEAKER_00: health team,
[43:17] SPEAKER_00: a doctor,
[43:18] SPEAKER_00: a nurse practitioner,
[43:19] SPEAKER_00: a record keeper,
[43:20] and two mobile sort of health ambassadors who are assigned
[43:24] about 2,500 families
[43:25] SPEAKER_00: over the course of a year.
[43:26] SPEAKER_00: And they show up and they knock on your door.
[43:30] SPEAKER_00: And they have your health records.
[43:32] SPEAKER_00: And they actually talk to you if you're lonely or old or whatever.
[43:36] SPEAKER_00: They know who you are from last year.
[43:38] SPEAKER_00: They'll take your blood pressure.
[43:40] SPEAKER_00: If type 2 diabetes is indicated, they'll take a blood sample.
[43:47] SPEAKER_00: They will screen you for depression.
[43:50] They'll go in your backyard and look for standing water where
[43:53] mosquitoes bear
[43:54] SPEAKER_00: infectious disease,
[43:56] SPEAKER_00: breed.
[43:57] They'll go into your refrigerator and look what you've been
[43:59] eating lately.
[44:00] And they'll often catch a disease 15 years before it shows up
[44:04] in the emergency
[44:05] SPEAKER_00: room,
[44:06] SPEAKER_00: costing somebody $100,000 to $150,000.
[44:07] SPEAKER_00: We don't do that in America.
[44:07] SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
[44:19] Costa Rica is not a place you want to go for a $2 million drug
[44:24] for a baby that has
[44:27] SPEAKER_00: a rare condition or some nuclear medicine.
[44:31] SPEAKER_00: But when it comes to a compassionate,
[44:34] cost-effective way of mitigating suffering and premature death
[44:40] at the population
[44:41] SPEAKER_00: level,
[44:42] SPEAKER_00: they do it at least 15 times better than we do in the United States.
[44:45] SPEAKER_00: And we ought to be paying attention.
[44:48] SPEAKER_00: And what I do with my blue zone cities mimics,
[44:51] SPEAKER_00: I spent a lot of time studying these basic health teams.
[44:54] I've been to Costa Rica three times embedded with these basic
[44:58] health teams and it's
[44:59] SPEAKER_00: working there.
[45:00] SPEAKER_00: It's working in Chile.
[45:03] SPEAKER_00: It's working in Cuba.
[45:05] SPEAKER_00: It's working in Scandinavia.
[45:07] SPEAKER_00: Just look at the numbers and I'm trying to get it.
[45:10] SPEAKER_00: I'm trying,
[45:11] SPEAKER_00: you can't do it nonprofit in this country,
[45:13] SPEAKER_00: but I'm trying to do it the best we can here in the United States.
[45:17] SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
[45:18] SPEAKER_01: well,
[45:18] SPEAKER_01: I think you have shown now over an extended period of time,
[45:21] and it sounds like from this recent back and forth that it's
[45:25] going to go up at
[45:27] SPEAKER_01: another level,
[45:28] that you're really bringing the lifestyle factors that are
[45:32] critical as mainstream
[45:34] SPEAKER_01: as you can in cities,
[45:36] SPEAKER_01: Now, more recently, perhaps in universities and other places.
[45:39] SPEAKER_01: And so,
[45:40] SPEAKER_01: you know,
[45:40] you've been a champion of this and it's important to emphasize
[45:44] it because there's
[45:46] so many hucksters that are showing all these things that have
[45:49] no evidence.
[45:50] I think the evidence that we would agree for the importance of
[45:55] Lee's lifestyle
[45:55] SPEAKER_01: factors,
[45:57] SPEAKER_01: for promoting healthy aging,
[45:58] SPEAKER_01: healthspan,
[46:00] SPEAKER_01: for not losing those 15 years between age 65 when the average American
[46:06] already is the end of their health span because they have a
[46:08] major chronic disease.
[46:10] SPEAKER_01: The life expectancy 80 or so,
[46:12] SPEAKER_01: a little less in the U.S.,
[46:14] those 15 years are because the difference those years lost
[46:19] between health span and
[46:20] SPEAKER_01: lifespan,
[46:21] SPEAKER_01: a lot of that can be reduced just by working with lifestyle factors.
[46:27] SPEAKER_01: And you've been on this.
[46:29] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[46:29] SPEAKER_00: I like to,
[46:30] I like to put a sharper point because lifestyle people don't
[46:34] exactly know what
[46:35] SPEAKER_00: lifestyle mean.
[46:36] I stay pretty focused on shaping your surroundings because I
[46:41] know if you look at
[46:42] SPEAKER_00: the data on diets,
[46:44] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[46:44] SPEAKER_00: Or exercise program or even prescription drug adherence.
[46:49] SPEAKER_00: They all have about a three to six month half life.
[46:53] SPEAKER_00: And then a year or two later, they're no longer doing them.
[46:56] SPEAKER_00: So we spend a lot of money.
[46:58] SPEAKER_00: It's like a Sisyphean treadmill.
[47:00] SPEAKER_00: You know, every year we knew New Year's resolution.
[47:03] SPEAKER_00: We're going to start the new diet or we're going to join the gym.
[47:05] SPEAKER_00: And this year I'm going to do it for sure.
[47:08] SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't work.
[47:09] SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
[47:10] SPEAKER_00: If you live in a if you live in a city that's walkable and bikeable.
[47:16] SPEAKER_00: the physical activity level of that city is about 20% higher.
[47:22] SPEAKER_00: You take Boulder,
[47:24] SPEAKER_00: Colorado,
[47:26] SPEAKER_00: the average person there,
[47:27] SPEAKER_00: or New York City even,
[47:30] SPEAKER_00: gets between 9,000 and 11,000 steps a day.
[47:33] SPEAKER_00: And in Houston or Phoenix, they get between 3,000 and 4,000 steps a day.
[47:39] SPEAKER_00: People say, I'm going to go to the gym.
[47:40] SPEAKER_00: Well, they don't.
[47:41] SPEAKER_00: But if you have a walkable street,
[47:44] you're going to pick up your cup of coffee or you're walking
[47:46] your kids to school or
[47:48] SPEAKER_00: you're walking over to see your neighbor's house.
[47:50] And there's something like 20 percent of Americans get zero
[47:53] physical activity.
[47:54] SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely.
[47:55] And,
[47:55] you know,
[47:56] the biggest bump in life expectancy is from zero to 20 minutes.
[48:00] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[48:01] SPEAKER_00: Three years of life expectancy.
[48:02] If you can just get people walking,
[48:04] I'd rather do that by setting up your neighborhood.
[48:07] SPEAKER_00: So it has sidewalks and bike lanes and trees and a park.
[48:13] SPEAKER_00: So you actually enjoy it.
[48:15] SPEAKER_00: So you're actually don't feel in danger doing it.
[48:18] SPEAKER_00: So it's convenient.
[48:19] SPEAKER_00: I'm totally with that's going to make a difference.
[48:22] SPEAKER_01: But what I would say when I use the term lifestyle,
[48:25] SPEAKER_01: you may remember from superators,
[48:27] SPEAKER_01: I meant lifestyle factors.
[48:29] SPEAKER_01: lifestyle plus because we agree on everything.
[48:34] SPEAKER_00: I was just putting a sharper point.
[48:36] SPEAKER_01: You already touched on the importance of air pollution.
[48:40] SPEAKER_01: And how, you know, you work on that in the places you go to.
[48:43] SPEAKER_01: But what about micro and nanoplastics?
[48:46] SPEAKER_01: What about forever chemicals?
[48:47] SPEAKER_01: You know, what about all these other pollutants that we don't?
[48:51] And this is part of the problem is we're not taking on the
[48:54] things we know are
[48:55] SPEAKER_01: diminishing our health span,
[48:57] SPEAKER_01: right?
[48:57] SPEAKER_01: And we don't have a government in this country.
[49:00] In fact,
[49:01] we're abandoning these environmental protections rather than
[49:04] dealing with them,
[49:05] right?
[49:07] SPEAKER_01: That's right.
[49:09] SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
[49:10] SPEAKER_00: Here's where the hope comes from, Eric.
[49:13] SPEAKER_00: Municipal governments.
[49:14] SPEAKER_00: I don't deal with the federal government.
[49:16] SPEAKER_00: I don't deal with state governments.
[49:18] SPEAKER_00: I deal with the mayor and the city council.
[49:21] SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of good local government who,
[49:26] SPEAKER_00: by the way,
[49:26] SPEAKER_00: most of them are in conservative cities.
[49:29] SPEAKER_00: Let's say we've had enough.
[49:31] SPEAKER_00: My kids are getting fat.
[49:33] SPEAKER_00: We've tried all that other stuff in the last 70 years.
[49:37] SPEAKER_00: We're going to try.
[49:38] I remember Fort Worth,
[49:40] Texas,
[49:41] one of the most conservative cities in America.
[49:44] SPEAKER_00: The mayor, they invited me there to show them the program.
[49:47] SPEAKER_00: And I got a lot of people saying, sounds like nanny state to me.
[49:52] SPEAKER_00: Sounds like they're taking away my freedoms.
[49:53] SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I am.
[49:54] SPEAKER_00: I'm taking away your freedoms to do unhealthy shit.
[49:58] SPEAKER_00: Um,
[49:58] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[49:59] SPEAKER_00: and I was walking out the door and the mayor said,
[50:02] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[50:02] SPEAKER_00: stop the meeting and said,
[50:03] SPEAKER_00: Betsy Price was her name.
[50:05] SPEAKER_00: She said, no, I think we ought to give Dan a chance.
[50:09] SPEAKER_00: And Fort Worth,
[50:09] SPEAKER_00: Texas,
[50:10] SPEAKER_00: in five years,
[50:11] SPEAKER_00: they themselves,
[50:13] SPEAKER_00: because of our program,
[50:14] SPEAKER_00: reported 3% drop in BMI,
[50:17] SPEAKER_00: the city of all of almost a million people,
[50:19] SPEAKER_00: compared to other Texas controls.
[50:22] SPEAKER_00: So while the rest of Texas got fatter, Fort Worth went down a little bit.
[50:28] They themselves calculated that we saved them about $260
[50:33] million a year in
[50:34] SPEAKER_00: projected healthcare cost,
[50:36] SPEAKER_00: a year.
[50:37] SPEAKER_00: Why?
[50:38] SPEAKER_00: Because now Fort Worth is more walkable.
[50:40] SPEAKER_00: It's more bikeable.
[50:41] SPEAKER_00: There are more healthy, whole plant-based options.
[50:45] SPEAKER_00: Schools are certified.
[50:46] SPEAKER_00: In the tough parts of town,
[50:48] SPEAKER_00: we put in coolers in the bodegas,
[50:52] SPEAKER_00: in the convenience stores,
[50:53] so that poor people in the inner city have access to fresh
[50:57] fruits and vegetables,
[50:58] SPEAKER_00: which they didn't have before.
[51:00] SPEAKER_00: This is not...
[51:01] SPEAKER_00: hounding people or guilting people or wagging our finger at people.
[51:05] It's simply making the healthy choice easy and the unhealthy
[51:09] choice less easy and
[51:10] SPEAKER_00: then letting the system go.
[51:13] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[51:13] SPEAKER_01: Great.
[51:15] SPEAKER_01: Well, I want to just close with thanking you, Dan.
[51:18] SPEAKER_01: This has been a really great conversation.
[51:21] You've gone through a lot of critical principles and the things
[51:25] that you've learned
[51:26] SPEAKER_01: over decades now.
[51:27] SPEAKER_01: And that we're all learning from.
[51:29] SPEAKER_01: And,
[51:30] SPEAKER_01: you know,
[51:30] SPEAKER_01: I wanted to bring up that tall poppy because whenever you're successful,
[51:33] SPEAKER_01: when any one person is successful,
[51:35] SPEAKER_01: you're the face of the Blue Zones,
[51:36] SPEAKER_01: obviously.
[51:37] SPEAKER_01: You're going to get flack.
[51:39] SPEAKER_01: But, you know, interestingly, you didn't for many years.
[51:42] SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, kind of came in a wave.
[51:44] SPEAKER_01: And I guess it really was that Nobel Prize that you're mentioning.
[51:47] SPEAKER_01: But you know what?
[51:48] Your success will be continued to be,
[51:52] you know,
[51:53] will be the naysayers out there.
[51:55] SPEAKER_01: They'll say,
[51:56] SPEAKER_01: well,
[51:56] the birth certificates and the pension fraud and the business
[52:00] interests and blah,
[52:00] SPEAKER_01: blah,
[52:00] SPEAKER_01: blah.
[52:01] SPEAKER_01: But look, what you're doing
[52:03] SPEAKER_01: is important.
[52:04] It's really,
[52:05] you're one of the few champions,
[52:08] you know,
[52:08] out there for these lifestyle factors.
[52:10] SPEAKER_01: So, you know, good for you, really.
[52:12] SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you.
[52:14] SPEAKER_00: You know, I have a very thin skin and it was people like you
[52:20] The very first person I called when I struck off on Blue Zones
[52:25] was a guy named Ancel Keys.
[52:27] SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
[52:28] You might have heard from Ancel Keys because he came up with a
[52:30] little diet called
[52:31] SPEAKER_00: the Mediterranean Diet,
[52:32] SPEAKER_00: the seven-country study.
[52:34] SPEAKER_00: And the University of Minnesota was my partner.
[52:36] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[52:38] SPEAKER_00: Bob Kane, Dr. Bob Kane.
[52:40] And I had a whole posse and they held my feet to the fire and I
[52:45] was really careful.
[52:46] SPEAKER_00: So when somebody comes along and essentially they
[52:51] lies in a way to get attention and starts to get intention by
[52:55] these misrepresentations.
[52:58] SPEAKER_00: I took it really hard.
[52:59] SPEAKER_00: I didn't sleep for about a year.
[53:01] SPEAKER_00: And it was not fair.
[53:03] SPEAKER_00: And if anybody who actually does a literature review, if you look for...
[53:09] SPEAKER_00: academic papers on blue zone.
[53:12] SPEAKER_00: And you'll see one more, another one in two days.
[53:14] And the gerontologist that backs me up a hundred percent
[53:17] gerontologist was the
[53:19] SPEAKER_00: academic,
[53:20] SPEAKER_00: um,
[53:21] SPEAKER_00: paper that,
[53:22] SPEAKER_00: um,
[53:22] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[53:23] debunked the Vilcabamba Valley of Ecuador and the Hunza Valley
[53:27] and the first
[53:27] SPEAKER_00: national geographic.
[53:29] SPEAKER_00: You're going to be surprised what they say about blue zone.
[53:31] SPEAKER_00: So I, you know, I, I, I'm a, I'm a honest person and I do my work.
[53:37] SPEAKER_00: Um,
[53:38] SPEAKER_00: And, uh, I take it very hard when, when people, I don't mind criticism.
[53:42] SPEAKER_00: If I, if I'd done something wrong, bring it at me.
[53:45] SPEAKER_00: I own it.
[53:46] SPEAKER_00: I'll try to fix it.
[53:47] SPEAKER_00: I'll apologize for it.
[53:49] SPEAKER_00: But it's really hard when,
[53:50] SPEAKER_00: when,
[53:51] SPEAKER_00: when,
[53:51] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[53:52] SPEAKER_00: people aggrandize themselves at my expense and,
[53:55] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[53:56] SPEAKER_00: um,
[53:57] SPEAKER_00: and,
[53:58] SPEAKER_00: and,
[53:58] SPEAKER_00: and,
[53:58] SPEAKER_00: and do so unfairly.
[53:59] SPEAKER_00: But anyway, I appreciate you bringing it up.
[54:02] SPEAKER_01: The good stuff overrides that.
[54:04] SPEAKER_01: That's all, you know, and good for you.
[54:07] SPEAKER_01: Keep up the stuff.
[54:08] SPEAKER_01: I get you even have a successor plan.
[54:12] SPEAKER_01: Danny Jr.
[54:13] SPEAKER_01: Dan Jr.
[54:14] SPEAKER_01: Hopefully he can keep this going for decades ahead too.
[54:17] SPEAKER_01: Right.
[54:17] SPEAKER_00: He's my, he's my genetic upgrade.
[54:20] SPEAKER_00: That's what I call him.
[54:21] SPEAKER_00: He's a good guy.
[54:22] SPEAKER_00: He's great.
[54:23] SPEAKER_00: All right.
[54:24] SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm a huge fan of yours.
[54:26] SPEAKER_00: I didn't even know you.
[54:27] SPEAKER_00: And I, I saw you on Mel Robbins and I was riveted, riveted.
[54:32] SPEAKER_00: And I said, Oh my God, I have a brother.
[54:34] SPEAKER_00: It's a,
[54:37] SPEAKER_00: Well, came at it in a very different angle.
[54:39] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but same conclusions.
[54:41] SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
[54:43] SPEAKER_00: so anyway,
[54:43] SPEAKER_00: I salute you,
[54:44] SPEAKER_00: and I'm honored to spend a little time talking to you publicly here,
[54:48] SPEAKER_00: and I'm going to get you on my podcast,
[54:49] SPEAKER_00: the Dan Buettner Podcast.
[54:51] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'll look forward to that.
[54:52] SPEAKER_01: I'll look forward to that when we get a chance to visit.
[54:54] SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much, Dan.
[54:55] SPEAKER_00: All right, brother.
[54:56] SPEAKER_00: Nice to meet you.
[54:57] SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
[54:58] SPEAKER_01: Bye-bye now.

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