Living for Longevity — with Dan Buettner

26:45But, um, life satisfaction goes up. So you get this sort of up and down of, of happiness and it's the picture's not clear. Um, in places like Denmark, mark, both kinds of happiness go up, presumably because there's better child care. And for the first year of life, both the man and women can take up to 12 months off to take care of that infant. As far as longevity, we did a study in Sardinia. Sardinia is home to the longest-lived men in the world, about 11 times more male centenarians there than you'd expect to see in a similar population in the United States. And the guys with the best chance of reaching age 100 had five or more daughters, specifically daughters.

27:36And we don't know if that's because, you know, daughters tend to take care of their aging fathers in that culture or if it's because there's a selection bias, that if you can survive five adolescent girls making it to 100, it's no problem. But it's very clear. It's got to be the former, isn't it? I would just think logically. I always joke, I wish I'd had, I have two boys. I always wish I'd had a daughter because I always thought the daughter would take care of me. The daughter would call me and say, Dad, did you pick up your medication? Dad, did you get your colonoscopy? That they would, you know, that they make sure that you're taking care of yourself.

28:17And to me, that makes just sort of, it's so funny that that seems so obvious. And I never thought that. have a bunch of daughters to live longer. Yeah. Living in extended families seems to be a trend in all blue zones. And I know people think the idea of their parents living with them might be horrible, but often there's not a choice in blue zones. But you see very tangible benefits. Something called the grandmother effect has shown not only in several cultures, but actual several mammal species that those that keep a parent near the family, the children in those families have lower rates of mortality and lower rates of disease.

29:01And not only that, if you're aging, mom's living with you, she's not in retirement home. Again, retirement home, instant lowering of life expectancy. So there's sort of a beautiful symbiosis that you see in families. So having children, raising them well, I would argue not coddling them. You don't see coddled children in the blue zones. Children are expected to be contributing members of the family. They're all sometimes in the field. They're gold herders by the age of eight or 12, between eight and 12. They're helping with kitchen chores. They're not just, you know, being driven to dance lessons and play dates like we typically see.

29:45There is a chance that they could get hurt. You know, they have to take on some responsibility and the attendant risk with that at a very early age as opposed to waiting age 25 to, you know, have to take your first risk in life. Yeah, I mean, so much of this is encouraging and discouraging. Do you have kids, Dan? I have three. And how do you, so my kids basically get up, you know, I hate to admit this, it's our fault. My kids don't even make their beds. The most active thing they do is they do take the tube. They do play sports at school, but they are coddled. I mean, they really are. And so what is your approach after doing all of this research?

30:31What is your approach to raising your children that might be a little different than how other people raise their kids? Well, at a certain point in my life, I told them I needed them at a very early age. And I gave them chores. I did need them. I needed them psychologically at that point. But I also, you know, logistically needed help. And, you know, I never made money until I was 40. And I made a lot of money. but in a way it was a gift to live in a household where you know we we had to make our own fun and I needed them to help me with the laundry etc and and with the yard and I think at the end of the day that was that was good it was a gift for them and why is that I'm gonna probe here are you a single father yes and so during that time you know I I needed them I enjoyed having them around me but they all they all worked they were supposed to do i also you know we didn't go to disney world we would go to the yucatan peninsula and crawl through batshit caves when they were eight nine ten years old and we would live in villages with yucatec maya and childhood with me wasn't safe in the immediate sense of the word but i believe it gave them enormous resilience for later in life.

31:52They're three very successful adults right now. We'll be right back. Race the rudders. Raise the sails. Raise the sails. Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching. Over. Roger. Wait, is that an enterprise sails solution? Reach sales professionals, not professional sailors. With LinkedIn ads, you can target the right people by industry, job title, and more. Start converting your B2B audience today. Spend$250 on your first campaign and get a free$250 credit for the next one. Get started today at linkedin.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply. For a limited time at McDonald's, get a Big Mac extra value meal for$8.

32:33That means two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun, and medium fries, and a drink. We may need to change that jingle. Prices and participation may vary. There is a lot to talk about when we talk about Donald Trump and Jimmy Kimmel. One big question I've got is why in 2025, our late night TV shows like Jimmy Kimmel's show still on TV. Even in our diminished times, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, they're just some of the biggest faces of their networks. If you start taking the biggest faces off your networks, you might save some nickels and dimes.

33:13But what are you even anymore? What even is your brand anymore? I'm Peter Kafka, the host of Channels. And that was James Ponowozik, the TV critic for The New York Times. This week, we're talking about Trump and Kimmel, free speech, and a TV format that's remained surprisingly durable for now. That's This Week on Channels, wherever you get your favorite podcasts. I like to think I can point, I can identify people who are good CEOs. I've spent so much time with good and bad CEOs that when I interview a CEO for a position as a director on a board, I feel like I'm a pretty good study. I'm not good at assessing other employees.

33:56I get fooled all the time, but I think I can kind of sum up someone's CEO readiness or not. What are the things, A, do you believe you can do that? And B, what are sort of the obvious tells when you spend, say, an hour with somebody? Well, just to level set, the chances of reaching 100 in America are less than 1 in 1 ,000. So the capacity of the human machine, so the average person our age is, for men, it's probably 93, maybe 94, and for women, it might be 96. So making it to 100 is exponentially more difficult than hitting the early mid-90s. So, okay, first thing, you know, I look at you and I say, I think you have a pretty good chance at reaching that capacity of the human machine.

34:48And it might go up, by the way, by the time, you know, it's our time that we might get to 100. But you're thin or you seemingly you're not overweight. You're obviously physically active. You live in London, which I would say stacks the deck in favor of longevity because you walk most places. You're mentally engaged. You seem to exude purpose. I don't know what you eat, but a few questions. How often a week do you eat meat? Ten plus. I would eat at every meal if I could. I eat a lot of meat. That is probably tripling your chances for cardiovascular disease. many types of cancers. You're not a big candidate for type 2 diabetes, but if you were an average American, that much meat would be a negative.

35:36How about processed foods? Not as much. And what's interesting about the UK is one of the things I've noticed here, and I think it's much healthier. You buy milk, you buy fruit, you buy juice, anything. What you notice is, wow, it rots right away. And then what you realize is there are thousands of pesticides and preservatives that are legal in the U.S. that are not legal here. And it never struck me just how much shit I was putting in my body in the U.S. until I moved to London. And I'm blessed I have somebody who loves to cook. So when I eat out, I eat fairly well. But when you eat out, my sense is it's full of butter and salt so you come back.

36:17So I don't eat, I probably am on the lower scale of processed food. That's good. Eating out in America, by the way, occasions consuming about 300 more calories than you would if you eat at home. Higher salt, higher sugar as well. So eating at home stacks a deck in your favor. How about your height to your midsection? Are you measuring in centimeters or inches? Are you at least twice as tall as you are round at the midsection? Oh yeah. I'm 6 '2", 189. I'm in good shape. That's exactly what I am. Oh, nice. Exactly. Are you shrinking though? I was 6 '3". Now I'm 6 '2". I was 6 '2 and a half, and now I'm 6 '2".

36:59Yeah, so I am shrinking a little bit. Everybody shrinks a little bit. You know, it's an effect of gravity over time. How many hours of sleep do you get? I'm good about sleep. I don't sleep as well because I have to get up and pee a lot. But if I can't sleep and it's 2 or 3 in the morning, I will, and we'll come back to this, I will take an edible and I will cancel my meetings in the morning because I don't. I spent so much of my life, Dan, working so hard that sometimes I would go four or five hours a night for three or four days in a row because I was traveling and just going from meeting to meeting to meeting.

37:32And pretty much since the age of 45, I don't sacrifice sleep. So I'm pretty good on the sleep other than the fact I have to get up and pee all the time. Yeah, me too on that one. When you look at mortality and number of hours slept per night, people who sleep seven hours seem to be optimal. So getting at least seven hours most nights, that seems to be the sweet spot. And so if you're getting that, that's going to favor your life expectancy. How about fruits and vegetables? Do you eat those every day? Terrible. Two to three times a week max. And the fruits I eat are in the form of juice, which has a ton of sugar in it.

38:12Juice is horrible. It's all metabolically as bad for you as a Coke. Yeah, so I mean... mid 80s maybe for you mid 80s all right i better go okay so i got i got it i got to get on this whole success and meaning finding meaning in one's life what about the by the way just just to put a finer point a more serious point on it there's very good research that shows that people are eating mostly a whole food plant-based diet uh eschewing a standard american diet at our age, 60, live about six years longer than people eating a meaty, cheesy, fatty processed food diet. So there's real benefits. To starting right away.

38:55Yeah, I'm 100 % get it. It's not too late, in other words. The other question I have is, you know, asking for a friend, alcohol and THC, alcohol and drugs. Okay, so I'm a bit of a contrarian when it comes to alcohol. I'm very aware of the recent epidemiology that no amount of alcohol is safe, but I can tell you in these blue zones, Highlands of Sardinia, in Icaria, and I've seen the surveys, I've been part of the surveys, about 90 % of people who are making it into their mid-90s and 100s are drinking every day of their lives. Now, are they doing shots of tequila with their friends? No. They're drinking mostly homemade wine with friends or with a meal.

39:39So could they live to 101 instead of 99? Maybe, but it's so clear that part of the fabric of their culture, their festivals, the way they're connecting with friends, the way they're, how this wine is interacting with the diet they're eating. By the way, a glass of wine with a plant-based meal about quadruples the flavonoid absorption so i'm not at all convinced that being a teetoler is healthier than drinking now i would argue a glass or two of wine with meal and friends i believe is part of is helping these people in blue zones live longer you're kind of you're the original gangster around this stuff i remember when did blue zones come out i wrote the cover story for national geographic in 2005 so almost 20 years ago.

40:31Yeah. And I'm sure you're watching over the last one or two years, Andrew Huberman and Peter Atia, both of whom are doctors, Huberman and Atia, both of them had both of them on the podcast and they have essentially declared war on alcohol. And some of this is just to make myself feel better. But I've always seen and read, including from your books, that social engagement or being really social is important to longevity and overall happiness. And I find that alcohol is a critical component of that. At least it is for me, and I think it is for young people. Well, you see, doctors and marketers also, they tend to want to identify the silver bullet and sell it to you.

41:11They tend to look at things in isolation. But I've spent 20 years with these five blue zones. I'm there every year. And I believe I know and have read and metabolized every single academic paper. there's a very clear cluster of lifestyle characteristics that keep people doing the right things and avoiding the wrong things for long enough so they're not getting a disease. And those are eating mostly a whole food plant-based diet with a little alcohol, moving naturally every 20 minutes or so, not marathons, not triathlons, not Pilates or CrossFit. They're mostly walking, by the way. Their life is underpinned with purpose, so they know why they wake up in the morning and what their responsibility is to the greater community, not just to their selfish selves.

42:10They tend to curate a circle of friends that reinforce the right behaviors and insulate them from loneliness and from the stresses of running out of money or a spouse leaving them or a parent dying or a kid getting thick. And they live in places where the healthy choice is the easy choice. And it's that cluster of things that's mostly environmental that is producing measurable, extraordinary longevity in five disparate places on the globe. And for me, that's a persuasive argument of what to do to live to a hundred. So let's talk a little bit. So let's talk about the U.S. If the Biden administration, and maybe they have, said to you, Dan, what series of, what two or three policies could we implement to dramatically raise not only the lifespan, but the health span, the quality of life of Americans?

43:04What would those two or three policies be? Well, I'm going to tell you they're not going to be popular. First of all, universal health care. every blue zones the access to health care is close to free not only that there's a much better emphasis on public health so rather than trying to pay for cleaning up the disease they're they're investing the disease to keep the disease from happening in the first place there's just no question that universal health care 11 of americans don't even have health insurance in this country. Number two, gasoline should be priced at a price very similar to what you pay for in Europe, which is about twice or three times even you see in some places.

43:56Why? Because what will happen if you raise gas, people will figure out how to take public transportation. People who take public transportation have about 20 % lower mortality than people who drive back and forth to work. So it gets them out from behind their wheels, onto their feet. They'll move closer to their schools and their jobs. There'll be more population concentration so people will be more social. And then the last thing is the farm bill. The farm bill right now is set up to subsidize soybeans, corn, sugar beets, and wheat. These are all the inputs of all the junk food we eat, the Doritos, feedlot animals, crappy beef and pork.

44:48If we pulled those subsidies out and instead of making it easy and cheap to raise these junk food inputs and instead shifted it to beans and grains and greens and organic vegetables, the price of those would come down and the consumption would go up places like singapore they see very clearly and gas is 11 bucks a gallon and um your car is going to be taxed 300 meanwhile there's a great subway system where it's easy to get any place point a to point b in a safe quick air conditioned way but you got to walk back and forth to the to the subway and people are taking 10 ,000 steps a day without even thinking about it.

45:30They subsidize brown rice and they're going to tax sugar. They already have a sugar tax in Singapore. And not coincidentally, they tax tobacco. In Singapore, you have a country where the health adjusted life expectancy, which is the estimate of how long people are going to live minus the years lost to chronic disease and the years of healthy life lost to disability. That's highest. They live about 15 more good years than Americans do. Heterogeneous society, just because they can see clearly and make their policies, set policies to favor the human being rather than to just favor business. So if you, general reductive advice, two or three things get started are like table stakes or most immediate incremental benefit.

46:26Talk about a 60-year-old, talk about a 25-year-old. What are those two or three things? Like, okay, I got five minutes with the leading authority on longevity. What are the two or three think boxes you need to check when you're in your 20s? And what about when you're in your 50s or 60s? At both ages, carefully curate the circle friends that you spend time with. We know that if your three best friends are obese, there's 150 % better chance you'll be overweight. So I wouldn't necessarily dump your old unhealthy friends, but I would say making the effort to find two or three new friends in your immediate social circle.

47:07These are people that you're going to see with some frequency or communicate with some frequency whose idea of recreation is biking or golf or pickleball or gardening, friends who care about you on a bad day. That's the real litmus test of a real friend with whom you can have meaningful conversation. And it's not a bad idea to have a whole food vegan or vegetarian in your immediate social circle because they're going to show you how and where to get healthy plant-based food. I can't emphasize the importance of that enough. If you really want to live longer, it's making that shift to whole grains, greens, beans, nuts, and tubers.

47:53It's indisputable in my view. As an extension of that, get yourself a good cookbook. You know, I've written Blue Zone Kitchen books, but there's lots of cookbook, great cookbooks that tell you how to cook, show you how to cook plant-based. Learn how to cook at home. instead of going on a diet or joining a gym say to yourself well for the next four Sundays I'm going to get my family together and we're going to cook three whole food plant-based meals together on Sunday afternoon store them for the rest of the week and eat them and the the trick is to not only know where you can get the ingredients know how to make it but the trick is to find a handful that you love.

48:42And once you find that, my job is over. Because at the end of the day, people really don't give a crap about the environment. They don't care that much about animal cruelty or even their health when it comes to a hungry belly at lunch. They want to eat something delicious. So as long as you can satisfy that hungry belly in a delicious way, people don't care that much. In other words, they'd happily take a healthy meal over an unhealthy meal as long as it tastes that good. Well, give us a little bit about your path professionally and what the big breaks were and what advice you would have for a young person who says, I would really like to have that guy's professional life.

49:24Like, what were the big breaks? What do you wish you'd started earlier? What skills do you think you brought to the table? What advice? Someone's 25. Maybe they enjoy thought leadership or science or they enjoy writing. And they want to be Dan. Well, heaven help them. They want to be Dan. But I would say, you know, I was an intern with George Plimpton, who was an editor of the Paris Review and a great writer, participatory journalist. I'd say, number one, and I would say for any 25 years, learn how to communicate not only verbal, but written communication skills. Storytelling. It's kind of everything, isn't it?

50:06Even in an age of AI, because being able to write well is a reflection of your ability to think and convey an idea and sell the idea, whether you're selling stocks and bonds, a real estate development idea, or in my case, longevity. So that is a good base. you know when you were off doing useful and productive things going to school and analyzing fixed instrument financial instruments i went rode my bike i i i hold the record for biking from alaska to argentina biking around the world and biking the length and width of africa that's what i did my most of my 20s which was actually very good training for life because you develop discipline.

50:55You develop a sort of empathy for other cultures and a sensitivity, also an ability to survive and to quickly learn, synthesize lots of information and put it to work. Then I started a company. I was writing while I was trying to write for National Geographic. That was my holy grail. And I kept getting rejected. But my editor said, you know, everybody likes your bike rides around here, but the new expeditions have to add to the body of knowledge or somehow illuminate the human condition. And at the time, this capability to interact online was coming online. And I developed a way of solving ancient mysteries by letting an online audience, direct a team of experts to solve these mysteries.

51:53And I took teams of 10, 12 people into Central America to try to figure out why the ancient Maya civilization collapsed and across China following Marco Polo's route. But we were connected to a million or so people and we harnessed the wisdom of the crowd and those became very successful. And I all of a sudden had a company, which I sold eventually to Hardcore Brace, a textbook company. And that, you know, I made money doing that. I made money not because I was pursuing the dollars. The dollars was a byproduct of something I freaking loved, which is expeditions and solving mysteries. And then I sold that company and now had a capacity for networking to top experts and National Geographic like me.

52:49And I got this cover story assignment to unravel the mysteries of longevity. But, you know, like you, Scott, I think if I would have asked the 20-year-old Scott Galloway to chart his career to the heights you are right now, you might have gotten a year or two into it before everything fell apart. And I'm pretty much the same way. You know, I've had lots of failures, but learned from my bike rides that they're not that bad in the context of what, you know, African villagers are going through. And tomorrow when I get on my bike, it'll be a new adventure, metaphorically, and I'll figure that out when I get there.

53:34Dan Buettner is a National Geographic Fellow, longevity researcher, and award-winning journalist. He's also the New York Times bestselling author of several books, including The Blue Zones, Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who've Lived the Longest, and Thrive, Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way. Also, Dan is a three-times Guinness World Record holder for distance cycling. That's a flex. Anyways, Dan, this whole space has just blown up and you genuinely are the OG here. You were in this before it was cool and kind of forged a category that's created so much attention, I think so much good living, so much longevity, and quite frankly, so much economic value.

54:18I think any, you know, the Huberman Lab or Peter Attea, I feel as if they should all send you royalty checks because you were sort of, you kind of paved the way here. It was really nice getting to spend some time with you and congratulations on all your success. Thank you, Scott. And I'm a big admirer of yours as well. If I had a Blue Zone star, I'd lick it and put it on your forehead because I think I'm going to see you when you're 100. I hope so, brother. I hope so.

54:56Algebra of happiness. I had this vision for what my relationship with my boys would be like. I thought they would be fascinated by me. And when they got home from camp, they'd want to sit down and tell me everything about what happened and talk about, you know, the hikes they went on. And as is often the case, my 14 year old came home, hadn't seen him in two or three weeks and kind of he was tired, hungry, and just sort of I said hi, didn't even say hi back, kind of slammed the door and went in his room. That is very upsetting for me. And I want to get angry at him. That is unacceptable behavior, sure.

55:29But more than anything, it doesn't foot to what I thought our relationship was going to be. And I feel insulted and hurt. And what I've come to realize as a dad, as a man, is that this basic notion of masculinity and manhood is that you add surplus value. And one means of surplus value is that dad just takes it. I'm not saying you tolerate or accept inappropriate behavior. My kids actually have very good manners. But you realize as dad, dad takes some body blows. And it's not about me. It's not my kids aren't here to serve or fill or ensure that our relationship is what I imagine so I can feel like a Hallmark commercial and have these dad moments.

56:14I get a lot of those, but that's not my job and it's not their job and it's an unreasonable expectation. My job is to protect and provide and be a role model, to be good to their mother and to ensure that they have whatever I can provide such that they have developed good character, are healthy and have a shot at being productive, loving citizens as they get older. But dad takes some blows. And if you're expecting that your relationship with your child is going to be two-way, it is not. It is not going to be, I mean, there'll be moments where you'll get more joy than you could have ever imagined.

56:52And we always talk about those moments. But on the whole, on the whole, it is a, what I'll call diminished or a debtor relationship. And that is you are going to give a lot more. You are going to be much more expressive, much more emotional, much more supportive, much kinder to them than they are going to be to you. And that is just part of it. That's what it means to be a parent. I also think that's what it means to be a dad. This episode was produced by Caroline Chagrin. Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer and Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

57:28We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn. And please follow our Prop G Markets pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday and Thursday.

57:47Oh my God. Let's be honest. Daddy's a genius. Daddy's a genius. That was just so elegant, so puncturing, so insightful, so daddy.