Want To Live Longer? Here's the Truth About Supplements, Peptides, VO2 Max, GLP-1's, and the Only Real Miracle Drug | Kara Swisher

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24:59where do you come down on some of these things you've just listed peptides pan scans don't need

25:04Kara Swisher:the scan they don't a good a good annual physical is fine it's fine if you want to do it for your own enjoyment you happen to have the money but it doesn't give you any unless you find yourself to have a tumor which okay that's a good thing to find but for the most part you know you get these false positives and you do more tests that you don't need. So it doesn't really give you an enormous amount of insight. And it only gives you insight in that moment of your body's time. So it's expensive and kind of pointless in a lot of ways. A good annual physical with a series of blood tests is plenty.

25:36Kara Swisher:And most people should have those, which they don't in this country. Well, we can get to that in a minute. And the other thing is, so I'm like, you don't need that unless you have so much money. And I still don't understand why you need to, you don't even understand that data or what it means. And again, it's a snapshot in time. Peptides is really, that's the new trendy thing. You know, look, GLP-1s are peptides, right? So, you know, a lot of people are using them and they, of course, everything is like, I feel better. I'm like, and not scientific. None of the science is there yet. And I don't mean to say it's not going to be.

26:08Kara Swisher:It just isn't. If you go, if you actually go find all the studies, very unproven. And that's my issue with it. It's like, you feel better? Really? Thank you, Dr. Einstein. I don't get it. And also, you're using peptides that have been mixed largely in China right now, which is where they're getting from them. And so, whenever someone does this, they're like, peptides. I'm like, China, they may not be pure. Sepsis. Sepsis is real bad, and you could get sepsis. I'm like, why are you doing this for unproven science? It's kind of silly, and people just shove it in there. in their body. Scott does a lot of these things.

26:44Kara Swisher:Scott Galloway, your co-host on Pivot. And then NADS, that's the other one. I feel better. Some of it is useful for healing wounds and things like that. NADS? NADS, it's another thing. The rich people go through them really fast. In the Hamptons, they go through them. Oh, I'm taking this. I'm taking that. Red light, people are mad at me, but most of the science is somewhat promising, but not yet. This is red light therapy. It works on plants in space. It helps them grow. And if you're a plant in space, I highly recommend it. Some inflammation stuff, sure. But my issue is the amount of money and the promises.

27:24Kara Swisher:It's not just possible small amounts of inflammation. It is going to make you young. It is going to solve your cancer. I'm like, no. They don't usually do that with red light. But what they do is they ascribe, if you look online, they give it an answer for everything. And the The science just isn't there. And I'm just like, I'm sorry, I cannot find really good scientific gold standard proof that this is the case. And so, but then you have people who just swear, I feel better. But I'm like, with a$600 face mask, same thing with heavy supplements, right? Some of them, vitamin K, probably. It's hard to get it elsewhere.

28:00Kara Swisher:B12, yes, that's something you don't get as easily. But, you know, say fish oil. I get it why people are taking it. Eat a piece of fish. Like, I'm just, I don't know. or protein maxing. That's the other one. Men. You don't need this much protein. Every single study says you don't need this much. You need a certain amount. That's true. Same thing with fiber, same thing with anything else. But what they do is they take one thing and then take it. If a little protein is good, then a lot of it has to be really good for you. And it's not, RFK. It's not. Do not eat caribou no matter what he says. It's not going to be good for you in the end and you're going to die.

28:34Kara Swisher:And so a lot of these interventions are not going to be good later, right when you're older and i worry about that uh hyperbaric chambers i went in one you do not need a hyperbaric chamber unless you are involved in the building of the brooklyn bridge in 18 in the 1890s yes or 70s that that's an important bends the bends is a terrible thing and you should go in a hyperbaric chamber there's some indication around wound healing when you're and you have surgeries and stuff but a lot of people are using it like just go in it and again if a little oxygen is good, a lot more might be better. They can also blow up.

29:07Kara Swisher:That's always an issue. And you can get a stroke in there, too. I'm sort of like, for what is, I feel better. Oh, okay. Great. Good for you. It costs$300 to sit in there and get more oxygen. Again, it's people take advantage of it. I'm trying to think of some other things. There's so many. Recently, there was electric vests when you exercise. It's a shock, yeah? I mean, you remember those, like, remember the thing where they, like, shook your butt back in the old days? That didn't work. But everyone Someone was doing it. Like, that's the kind of thing. Electric vests that shock you while you're working?

29:39Kara Swisher:Someone sent it to me the other day. Yeah, you wear a vest. Well, weighted vests. Fine. Okay. Those are okay. Those seem fine. You have to be careful about on your joints and everything else. But they're electric vests and they shock you. I just, I couldn't even. I was like, no, we're not doing it. We're not doing this. Something else you test on the show alongside the aforementioned Scott Galloway is sound therapy. Sound therapy. which is actually, at some point, there's some indications that sound can calm people, cortisol issues, things like that. But you already know this when you listen to a symphony.

30:11Kara Swisher:You already know this as a human being. But here it is taken to extreme. It's a giant, seven, I don't know, 15 ,000, I forget how much it was. It was some number that was large. It's a pod that you sit in and you listen to indigenous music and it vibrates. I don't know, I could sit on the subway and listen to Tchaikovsky and have the same experience. You know what I mean? Like, kind of thing. And so they're trying to do the science around it. And I do, you know, I think through history, music has been really important to people. And they're, for calmness, for cortisol, for all kinds of, you know, I can see it.

30:45Kara Swisher:But it's also, again, unproven. And you don't need a pod to do it. Right. Spotify subscription might do the trick. Correct. Calm. Like, whatever. Just use calm. And, you know, I think at the same time, then people are like going into chatbots and using their phones, which are very bad for your health. Like constant doom scrolling besides upsetting you and creating all manner of problems has all these deleterious effects like on you. And it's going to be utterly proven that negative effects, especially chatbots on people, they start to get psychosis around it, especially with kids. A lot of kids have committed suicide after having chatbot relationships, which a lot of these tech companies are coming in.

31:25Kara Swisher:And so the things that really hurt you, no one's focused on because this is what we've accepted as our reality, which is constantly be staring at a device. I completely see how being sucked into your device all day long, specifically social media with the toxic comparison and anger and anxiety. Lack of movement. And lack of movement. But chatbots specifically, like I talked to Claude about my creative stuff. Sure, that's fine. Okay, that's different. It would be better to talk to a human. Why do both? Yes, exactly. I mean, I think I'm talking about the dependence on it. And you can see it moving that direction.

32:02Kara Swisher:I interviewed Sherry Turkle of MIT who's been studying this for years. And it is starting to become a real problem because it was usually a fringe thing that people had. But when you start to create relationships that are without friction, it's not good for your brain. It's just not. One of the things that Silicon Valley people say all the time, the word seamless, they like, let's make it seamless. I'm like, let's not make it seamless because friction is actually very good for your cognitive development. Friction, doing things different, interacting with people. You know, Zeke does all kinds of different things from his job.

32:31Kara Swisher:He makes honey, he dances, he does very good for your health, actually, your cognitive health, especially, which is critically linked to your other health, right? It's all part of a system. And so, you know, it's fine, but it becomes addictive in that way. And especially, you know, with young men watching porn all the time, young women, self-esteem, this all has health effects on people. And then it removes people from other people. So I did a sober rave, which I hated because I don't like dancing in the sauna with young people. But it's actually very good for you. It's like group activities. I brought a neuroscientist to a game-playing night in Brooklyn where all these young people put their phones down.

33:15Kara Swisher:They play games, mahjong, chess, poker. By the way, these young people cannot play poker. I beat them all very badly, like a drum. I beat them like a drum is what it was. But it was actually fun. You know what I mean? And I felt better after it and I couldn't quantify it. But we spent a lot of time because of digital issues away from each other. If someone was like, what's the number one thing you can do for longevity? I was like, well, don't be poor, really. That's, you know, be rich because that really helps you in terms of longevity. Two things, universal health care for the whole population and community, friends and family.

33:47Kara Swisher:Scientific research on this is very clear. Human interaction is probably one of the healthiest things you can do and have connections with people and lack of connections, loneliness. We talked about that. The separation and isolation is incredibly bad for humans. Yes. You interviewed Bob Waldinger, who is, in my opinion, just kind of like world historic. Right. In terms of what his research has shown, which people listening to the show probably are familiar with, but this study of multi-generations in the Boston area for 90 years. Both poor and rich, too, they studied. Yes. And the number one variable in your longevity is not being in a hyperbaric chamber.

34:27No. It's the quality of your relationship.

34:28Kara Swisher:The quality of your relationships. And it's scientifically—and they're adding things onto that to show that. And I think, oddly enough, people intuitively know this, right? Because the other night, I had a mahjong. I got a La Mahjong lesson. I hired this lady to do, I won it in a school auction. And so she came and invited 16 people who did not know each other very well. They knew me, but weren't friends necessarily because it's easier to fall into easy patterns with friends. And we had a fucking ball and everyone was like, I feel better. And I was like, actually, if we looked at your brain right now, you would be better.

35:01Kara Swisher:Right. And it was really interesting. And it was a feeling of happiness, like happiness of connection. Even negative connections can be helpful, right? You know, fights and things like that, as long as you're doing them in a healthy and non-toxic way. Even one of the things that I found interesting among the studies was encounters with people you don't know, good encounters socially, like you say hi to a barista or something like that, is good for everybody. And I would challenge everybody, I say this on a lot of things, when you go out for coffee look at the barista and say hey how's your day this is what happens like you could see yes yes look up what you're interested in me and follow it with with i watch my son do this and it's really something when you actually are paying attention to it how's your day like oh good like oh what are you doing fun this weekend like it's a game changer and you could see it and then you feel better and then but there are all kinds of scientific i mean bob is great this happiness study at Harvard.

36:01Kara Swisher:It's Harvard, the Harvard happiness study. And it's really quite remarkable. Now, look, miserable people live long too, as we know, but, but connections. Who could you be referring to? My mother. But. I thought you were talking about Trump. No, but she has a lot of community. Oh, he is, well, you know, he has a lot of community. Oddly enough, he surrounds himself with people all the time. If you think about it, he's very social. He's very social. I don't, I don't think he has any friends and he has a lot of people he knows. But I do think, I mean, can you imagine, you know, hugging it out with a guy with him?

36:33Kara Swisher:No, you wouldn't. You wouldn't see that. But he has connections. He does make connections, whether they're loathsome people, that's for sure. But he does make connections. He's very, he likes those outdoor activities. It's always in service to his ego so that they, come let us adore me kind of stuff. Watch me cheat at golf. Watch me cheat at golf, stuff like that. But he actually is very social. No, that is a fair point. He wants a ballroom for fuck's sake. He's obsessed with it. Exactly. We've now moved into the what works section, but I'm just curious, like has your social life changed as a result of doing this?

37:07Kara Swisher:Yeah, I'm doing more things I don't. One of the things that Zeke does, which I thought was good, is try something you couldn't try. Like I learned to play mahjong. I'm not going to keep at it necessarily, but trying to do different. I'm looking at that ukulele over there. I'm like, I should learn to play that ukulele. You know, some people do crossroads, but it has to be beyond that kind of stuff. I definitely remove the phone from my presence more because you have to. You're addicted to it. You can't help but look at it. It's an addiction machine. And so I remove it. I spend a lot more time with my kids.

37:39Kara Swisher:You don't have to do constant things, just sitting quietly. The other day I found myself, I went into a church and just sat. I haven't been in a church in a long time. It was lovely, actually. Am I going to get Kara Swisher meditating? No. No, never. I'm such a monkey mind. No, I'm the worst meditator. I'm literally, I can't do it. I can't do it. I have a monkey mind. Can we talk about this? Sure. Because Zeke's on my show as part of this same series we're doing about longevity. And he said the same thing to me. Can't do it. And none of the Emanuel's can meditate. I want to preface what I'm about to say.

38:12Kara Swisher:Are we going to meditate? No, we're not. I want to preface it by saying I'm not trying to convince you to do anything. I never do that. I just want to convince you that the story you're telling yourself that you can't do it is false. Ah, that's true. So meditation does not involve clearing your mind. It just means focusing your mind for a nanosecond or two on one thing, usually your breath. Every time you get distracted, you start again. And in the waking up from distraction, you learn to be less owned by the monkey mind. Oh, interesting. There is so much science on meditation being so good for your health.

38:45Kara Swisher:I mean, absolutely. There's no question in my mind that of all the many things you could do, a meditation every day is probably one of the most healthy things you could do for yourself, both cognitively and personally, and from just a soul point of view, right? But health, absolutely. I have no—every bit of science explains this very clearly, and it's one of the ways to do it. Here's how I do it. One of the things I started doing, I did VO2max, which I do think is actually a great indicator. Can you describe what that is? The O2 Max is basically how your muscles and heart work together in a more efficient manner.

39:16Kara Swisher:That's the easiest way to put it. And you have a score. When you take the test, you put one of those, you know, one of these masks, like Bain masks on your face. Tom Cruise has it and, you know, the whole facial breathing thing. While you're sprinting on a bike or something like that. You don't have to run that hard, but you have to run a certain amount. What you want to do is you want to get your heart rate up and then it's the ability to get it down again. Like that's, you know, so intermittent running is actually one of the best things. A lot of men are like, I'm going to run until I drop. I'm like, don't do that.

39:47Kara Swisher:That's really bad for you. You could possibly have a heart attack. Running up the scale, say zone one, zone two, zone three, go back to zone one. How quickly does your body, your heartbeat go back down to whatever it happened. In my case, it's 110 to 120. How quickly does it go down from 130? And so VO2 max measures this. That's all. It's a test. and I got my VO2 max up quite a bit. Like I was in the low 30s. I got it up to 37 now. So I started running. That's what I, because I used to run. I stopped and then I started again. It's on the treadmill and on the treadmill, I don't listen to anything.

40:24Kara Swisher:I don't listen to music. I just do it and that's my meditative state. That is meditative. That's what I do and I let my mind wander and I get bored if that makes sense. Like, and that's the hardest part is I was with my kids the other day and there was a story about boredom and like people's inability to be bored now. And my son goes, what'd you do when you waited in line? I'm like, we were bored. Like you just stood there and you either talk to people, you didn't do anything, like you didn't. And there was nothing to look at. Maybe you had a newspaper possibly or a magazine, but mostly you were bored.

40:59Kara Swisher:And the ability to be bored is something I want to sort of have happen to me. Well, a lot of creativity can come out of boredom. Absolutely. Absolutely. Where do you get your career? I get it in the shower. I often get it in meditation. Oh, interesting. Because what's happening is you're turning down the volume on habitual thought patterns, and then new things arrive. 100%. 100%. I do it in the shower, I suddenly am like, oh yes, that. Because I'm just staring, essentially. And I do think that a lot of those quiet moments are really important. And I went to Korea, and that's a really interesting country.

41:33Kara Swisher:They've got all manner of problems in Korea, let me just say. but the longevity is going up, up, up, up, up, especially among women. And first thing is absolutely universal health care. Universal health care for everybody. The rich get better health, but everybody gets a very quality level of health care every year. And they can go up to 16 times and get tests and stuff like that. They're focused on the face people think is vain. I'm like, actually, it isn't. It's about you're keeping your body feeling good, right? And I think that's interesting. And when you say, how are you? In Korean, what they were telling me is the expression is, how is your body?

42:09Kara Swisher:So they're thinking about it. And then the last thing is their nutrition from a young age. I went to a school and the stuff they're serving, it's like these kids, it's unrecognizable in this country. They learn from a very young age to eat healthy foods, whether it's fermented foods. RFK, you're right about ferments. You're absolutely right. Ferments are good for you. But fermented foods, they have a protein, they have a whole food, a whole fruit, a whole vegetable. And these kids eat this as if they were eating Doritos and hot dogs. It's really quite something to watch in terms of... But it's not like they don't eat snacks later.

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45:37Kara Swisher:Which I find irritating. So what goes in that category? Just even the ability to belong to a health club and go there, right? Most, many people have two jobs. You know, that was one exchange with Brian that I thought was my favorite in the whole series where he goes, you know, everyone can get a good night's sleep. I go, everybody can't, Brian. Like that he thought that some people, you know, your single mother, two jobs, you got to deal in a bad section of town. You can't sleep very well. You have housing insecurity. You have healthcare insecurity. You have childcare insecurity. One after the other, the health implications just, and that to me is one of the things that was sort of like the amount of money we spend in not keeping people well at the beginning in preparation.

46:25Kara Swisher:It's like putting $20 in the bank and then when you get to$70, you have a million dollars. The money we pay in that period, the statistic that got me is, I think in this country, our health span is 65, apparently. That's what it's at now. Our lifespan is 79 now, which seems very young for most people, right? But that's what it is. That 14-year gap is all sick care. It's hypertension, inflammation, cancer, blah, blah, blah. First, you have to collapse that. That would be great to collapse the lifespan and health span. The other part is we spend 15K, a little bit more than 15K on health care per capita.

47:08Kara Swisher:And we are at the lowest of every rung, every single indicator of health we are at the bottom of. Korea, every peer country essentially is$6 ,000,$7 ,000. And they have so much better health outcomes. So to me, it's an economic argument. What are we doing? Like we're wasting money on people dying, like in ways that are totally preventable. And that's the other part. So, and let me put the last part I would say is some of the medical breakthroughs. That to me was really exciting. That's the part I really thought was important, was that all this noise, everything else, there are medical breakthroughs happening around mRNA technology.

47:48Kara Swisher:What's that? Vaccines. Okay. It's the mRNA vaccines. It was used for COVID, but mRNA is messenger RNA, ribonucleic acid. It's the COVID vaccine, except it was originally studied for a cancer vaccine. They will be able to do a cancer vaccine. They just announced a pancreatic vaccine, pancreatic cancer vaccine. This is a very trouble. This is a cancer that is not easily treated traditionally. They've made huge strides in breast cancer and lung cancer. not pancreatic, not lung cancer, excuse me, breast cancer and a variety of cancers, but lung cancer and pancreatic cancer are very difficult to treat with current methods.

48:26Kara Swisher:And so these mRNA technologies are amazing, but what is the Trump administration cutting? So I visited an mRNA lab, and essentially the head of it who won a Nobel Prize is like, they're murderers. We're killing people. So mRNA technology, amazing. GLP-1 technology is really interesting, speaking of peptides, But this idea of helping use this drug to get people slim, but then accompanying it with food education and exercise education, groundbreaking. But they're expensive. They are now. They shouldn't be. If I was running it, I'd give everyone who needed a GLP-1 to take it. And then there's, right now, all these studies about its help in cognitive health and strokes and things like that.

49:09Kara Swisher:Do you take one? I do now because my cardiac doctor was like a very small amount, but it's like two. I forget what it is. I haven't started yet. But it's in order to prevent the stroke because there's all these indications that GLP-1 drugs help with strokes and I don't want a recurrence of my stroke. All manner of things. But we should be doing gold standard tests and all this for our citizens so that we get rid of obesity, we get rid of, you know, food, food noise. It has indications around addiction. I interviewed Ron Kessler, his former FDA commissioner. He himself, smart man, educated man, has enough money, was way overweight.

49:47Kara Swisher:And GLP-1s is the only thing that worked. I just saw Whoopi Goldberg, who talks about it. She was 230 pounds. Now she's healthy. She said she's gotten rid of her hypertension. She's gotten rid of, like, There's all these great stories, but it's not just about weight. It's about other things, too, addictions. The other thing I think is amazing, I hate to say AI, but AI and drug discovery, AI and cancer research, gene folding, CRISPR. I interviewed Jennifer Doudna. I went to one lab at Stanford. When I had my stroke, they used a catheter that went up my leg and put a plug in my heart. That was perfect.

50:25Kara Swisher:There's a new technology they're working on at Stanford, which is astonishing, that I show in the show, where they have this, remember the Fantastic Voyage when they injected the little ship into the rich guy in order to solve the clot or whatever he had? It's an old, look it up, it's about these bunch of scientists that get injected into the body, and they get attacked by white blood cells. Anyway, it's a great show, and it's like all old, glitchy technology that looks stupid on the screen, but it's fantastic. You can see the string for the thing. And so this thing goes, this is a little nanobot.

50:59Kara Swisher:It's not that small. It's small. It's injected into your neck if you have a stroke. Right when you're having a stroke, they inject in your neck and through magnets and AI and a mapping of your particular brain, it goes to the stroke and it eats it and then it comes out. Now they have to put catheters up there, which is better than before, right? Everything has gotten better. And if sometimes the blood clot would break off and go further, which is worse, right? So there's just this amazing technologies that people work on, all of which are being decimated by the Trump administration. The stuff we're doing here around vaccines alone is murderous, as far as I'm concerned, that we are demonizing a technology that has been so helpful to humanity and keeps us healthy.

51:45Kara Swisher:You know, the fact that measles is back. I mean, I call Robert F. Kenny Jr., best friend to measles. And yes, he's right about eating apples, Robert. Thank you. No shit. No shit in apples good for you. Just to double click on what you said before, we may have a vaccine for pancreatic cancer? Yes. I just interviewed the guy who's working on it at Sloan Kettering. What they do is they, eventually, this was really interesting, you'll get the vaccine before you get pancreatic cancer. And there's lots of different ways to do this. One is to prevent things that later lead to pancreatic cancer. Another one is to give you a longer lifespan in the thing.

52:24Kara Swisher:People with pancreatic cancer usually get like six months to two years to live, essentially. The people that are on these vaccines, these specialized vaccines aimed at them, which is how mRNA technology works, they're living eight to nine years, which is really like, it changes the game. And then there's, think about all that expense in that time period of dying, Like the amount of how it's expensive to die in our country, right? Because we hold people on that should go. And we also can't solve the real problems, which is mobility and stuff. And then the last thing I thought was amazing in Korea was these exoskeletons that they're working on all these devices that are powered by AI and mechanics.

53:08Kara Swisher:It used to be a lot of this stuff was just mechanical, but AI is now involved that people who can't walk will walk with these exoskeletons. And think about the health care implications there, sitting in a chair, all that health care. You know, if you could walk and be mobile, it changes your mental outlook, it changes your health outlook. And the government is funding them. Lots of experiments, even AI that, you know, I think is quite the way we are putting it out because the companies are in charge of guidelines for AI and they're always going to try to take advantage of you. in Korea they're funding a thing the government is where old people they put AI in dolls like these dolls and these women who are lonely like older women are lonely they give them these dolls they learn to play with them which is always good to play with a doll like it makes you feel better and the AI engages with them the dolls talk to them and they can respond in real time kind of stuff like how are you doing today I'm bad oh the weather's bad like like you're talking to a person And it solves a loneliness issue they have there.

54:10Kara Swisher:And at the same time, they then bring all the women with the dolls together. But the government is controlling it so it doesn't get out of hand. It doesn't say, hey, perhaps you should hang yourself today, which some of this AI does say to young people especially. One thing I'm hearing, and this was a few sentences ago, that the future of health care is going to be hyper-personalized. Yes, it will be. Yes. They will understand your body and help you specifically. Although bodies have a lot of commonality, right? There's a lot of commonality in a lot of things. And that's one of the things that is, you know, we do treat it a little bit too artisanally in the wrong things and not, and not, we should do more of commonality.

54:51Kara Swisher:But yes, they will be able to, why not use technology for what's good at, which is pattern matching, all manner of things it does well. But to me, they will be able to target your particular cancer cells. And one of the people I interviewed, as much as I give tech people a hard time, was Reed Jobs, the son of Steve Jobs. He's been investing in all manner of stuff, especially because his dad died of pancreatic cancer. But one of the things he was working on was liver cancer and getting rid of, as I believe I'm telling you correctly, is if you get hep B, I think it's hep B, leads to liver cancer almost all.

55:27Kara Swisher:alcoholism and hep B I think it's hep B not A and if you can get rid of you can block hep B from ever happening you don't get liver cancer or a lot of people don't if you drink too much you're probably going to get it and so that's kind of really promising and I find that really interesting to try to use you know these technologies drug discovery is another one how quickly like shingles they didn't think it was for cognitive health but AI figured that out right like wow we would have gotten there. But think of all the people you can help in the interim that you did. And so that's how I look at technology.

56:02Kara Swisher:And so there's all manner of things it's going to be able to help us with, but it is not distributed among everybody because it's such a cost to keep people sick. It's such a cost to have. The amount of money we spend on health care is such wasted money. And it's also, it's a happiness deficit, right? Like being sick sucks and it takes the joy out of your life. And, you know, it doesn't allow you to be with your kids. It gets in the way of a lot of things. It makes you miserable. It makes you dependent on drugs. And we did a little psychedelics. I took ketamine. Did you like it? No. Why not? Because I felt alone and I don't like being alone.

56:40Kara Swisher:I wasn't lonely. I'm never lonely. I wish I was lonely sometimes. I mean, everyone has trauma. It's been shown to have some really great effects on people with PTSD and vets and stuff. I want them to do lots of experiments. I just talked to Michael Pollan about it just last week. There's all manner of interesting experiments being done here, and anything to get us off of opiates is ACEs in my book, essentially. Again, the problem is it's being used recreationally. It's being used as a party drug. It's being used not in the ways that could, you know, we need those standard tests to understand what works and what doesn't.

57:15Kara Swisher:I just didn't like it. I I felt isolated in a way I didn't enjoy. It was also nauseating. I'm not a drug person. I don't do drugs. But a lot of people like them. They like ayahuasca. They like mushrooms. They like, and I'm all for studying. Like Michael talked about LSD in his last book, you know, because it was demonized by the Nixon administration because all the hippies were trying it out. But there were so many promising studies around LSD that just got, we don't know. So why not do why don't we find out and try to get that? And I'm all for that. Let me end where we started. Sure. Because I think one of the things that makes your work in this space distinctive is the fact that you're talking about longevity in the light of death.

58:00Kara Swisher:Yes. And in the light of technology. Yes. Yes. Fair point. But let me stick with the death part for a second. You're essentially making the case, and millennia of contemplative history would back you up on this, that contemplating death is actually additive. It is. It is. You know, it's funny. I'm going to reach down for my phone here. But one of the things I have on my phone is a thing called We Croak. Oh, yeah. I've had the founder on my podcast. Oh, I love him. He's such a sweetheart. So, you know, with We Croak, it says one of the things. Well, this is an interesting one. It comes up with quotes, and it says, in Bhutan, they say, contemplating death five times daily brings happiness.

58:36Kara Swisher:I absolutely agree with it. Every time, and then this one is, I think it's always nice to know that you are not alone, even in death, Joe Brainerd. True. It is. I think knowing you're going to die, as I quote Steve Jobs, is the single greatest gift that, you know, because it spurs you to live your life. And I got a lot of inspiration from Steve, who died far too young. he gave that speech at Stanford that was so famous his death speech essentially saying anytime I feel stuck I think I'm going to be dead and then I get up kind of stuff and he said it's the single greatest invention of life he's so different than all these people these narcissistic pricks he was narcissistic in his own way but not he had a much broader thing and I think in dying young the shame was that he was beginning to understand that like that idea i was trying to create a life where that where he was thinking about death and it was if you will read any speech read that speech he did at stanford about death and um and i really i that really was very profound to me because if you do that like i know it sounds dumb but people like how are you so successful like changing like i always change things in media i try new things you did you've done it yourself right i was like because i'm gonna be dead in 50 years and they're always like, what?

59:54Kara Swisher:I'm like, that's every time I don't want to do something, I'm like, oh, hey, guess what? In 50 years, I'll be dead. And then I'm like, oh, okay, then I'll do it. And so I think it promotes risk. It promotes innovation. It promotes not getting dragged down by things as if you're going to be here forever. And I just, I think it gives you freedom. That's what it did for me, at least. I don't know if it does that for you. You've changed, right? Yes, yeah, absolutely. Why do you do what you do? there's the question of why do I do what I do generally and I think it's kind of summed up in this tattoo I have on my wrist ftboab is just a buddhist expression for the benefit of all beings that's what I do I'm very clear about my job is to be of use to other human beings right so my decisions are made in that in that light so it's a service light mine more or more another buddhist saying which is um everything is subject to decay those that know this are a piece though in a world of pain.

1:00:47Kara Swisher:That's a famous quote, right? And so on my tattoos, let's compare tattoos. You have one, Lucy? I have lots of tattoos. These are my four kids, Louis, Clara, Alex, Saul. They're in little hearts. But underneath it is the symbols. And I have a ginkgo leaf on my leg that I hate as my first tattoo. I don't like it. It looks like a shamrock and then people think I have a shamrock. And why would I have a fucking shamrock? It's a ginkgo leaf, the greatest you know the longest living plant on planet on earth plant on earth so this is um entropy entropy excuse me this is entropy which is all things are subject to decay all things will be destroyed no matter everything's on its way to something else that's chaos right but the opposite there's always an opposite chemical reaction to everything this is entropy which is everything's on its way to something else and so this is about building and if you're in if you're in the indian religion, it's Ganesh, destroyer and creator.

1:01:42Kara Swisher:There's so many themes about that. So these two belong together. Like, yes, it's being destroyed, but guess what? It's like, I'm going to be something. I'm not going to be this table someday, but something else. Like, who knows? Like, and at the end of the show, we talk about it with my brothers. We're eating oysters. And I was like, well, they think everything is something else. And we had been talking about my grandmother and we were starting to eat the oyster. I'm like, maybe this is grandma. And then we just go, delicious and it was kind of wonderful that you know and that's a famous quote you know the the king eats the thing and then he becomes the worm and then the worm meets the king and then the worm is eaten by the bird who then is eaten by the king and you kind of like that you're kind of it's a good policy and yours is in service which is really nice i'm not as service orange as you are which i appreciate i'm in service at my best i see in moments where i'm uh being shitty it's when I fall out of...

1:02:35Kara Swisher:Oh, out of service to others. Yeah. I think of it more like, I know it sounds dumb, but I was at a job I didn't like and I did the death thought. I'm like, oh, I'm going to be dead. I'm going to get out of here. I've got to get out of here. And the person who I quit, it was a big job, goes, nobody quits here. I'm like, well, they do. They actually just did. And they're like, why are you quitting? And I turned to them, I said, do you want to know the truth? And they said, yes. I said, I don't want to talk to you anymore. And they were like, what? And I go, ever. like the minutes of my life, tick tock away.

1:03:05Kara Swisher:And I say that to my kids all the time when they keep me waiting. I'm like, tick tock, let's go. And they were like, what? And I go, gotta go. And I just, I couldn't. And like, that was, I was so aware of time. And I think my favorite quote of all time is, I think it's Henry IV. I waste time and now doth time waste me. I don't waste time. And we are all the beneficiaries. Oh, thank you. You too. I think what you're doing is amazing. Thank you. I appreciate it. I'm grateful for your time. Thank you. Grateful for your work. Good. This was awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much to everybody who worked so hard to make this show.

1:03:3710 % Happier is produced by Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the great indie rock band Islands wrote our theme. One last thing I want to say before you go. If you enjoy this show, please do me slash us a solid. Follow the show and leave a rating and a review on whatever platform you watch or listen to us on. It only takes a minute. It's free and it really helps new people find us and spread the good news that the mind is trainable.

1:04:16Thank you. Sincerely, I mean it. Thank you.

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