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SPEAKER_07
The Therapy for Black Girls podcast is your space to explore mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves.
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I m your host, Dr. Joy Harden-Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, and I can t wait for you to join the conversation every Wednesday.
0
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Listen to the Therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
0
SPEAKER_07
Take good care, and we ll see you there.
0
SPEAKER_03
Get emotional with me, Radhi Devlukia, in my new podcast, A Really Good Cry.
0
SPEAKER_03
We re going to be talking with some of my best friends.
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I didn t know we were going to go there on this.
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People that I admire.
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When we say listen to your body, really tune in to what s going on.
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Authors of books that have changed my life.
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Now you re talking about sympathy, which is different than empathy.
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Never forget, it s okay to cry as long as you make it a really good one.
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Listen to A Really Good Cry with Radhi Devlukia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
0
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Bring a little optimism into your life with The Bright Side, a new kind of daily podcast from Hello Sunshine, hosted by me, Danielle Robay.
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And me, Simone Boyce.
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Every weekday, we re bringing you conversations about culture, the latest trends, inspiration, and so much more.
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I am so excited about this podcast, The Bright Side.
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You guys are giving people a chance to shine a light on their lives, shine a light on a little advice that they want to share.
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Listen to The Bright Side on America s number one podcast network, iHeart.
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Open your free iHeart app and search The Bright Side.
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We make about 220 food decisions a day.
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Only 10% of them are conscious.
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If you re unhealthy and overweight, it s probably not your fault, and I ll tell you why.
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New York Times bestselling author, award-winning journalist, Dan Huber.
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These five areas where people are living measurably longer, not only is there plenty of evidence that these approaches work, but also it offers a path to longevity that s enjoyable.
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Before we jump into this episode, I d like to invite you to join this community to hear more interviews that will help you become happier, healthier, and more healed.
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All I want you to do is click on the subscribe button.
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I love your support.
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It s incredible to see all your comments, and we re just getting started.
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I can t wait to go on this journey with you.
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Thank you so much for subscribing.
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It means the world to me.
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The best-selling author and host.
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The number one health and wellness podcast.
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty.
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Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world, thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to become happier, healthier and more healed.
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Now, I love sitting down with people who have deeply studied, obsessed,
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and excavated insights and ideas for us.
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People who have focused deeply on mining the world, traveling the world, and finding wisdom, finding tenets of ideas and concepts that can transform the way we live in the modern world.
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And today s guest is someone I ve had on the show before, but I am so excited to see him again after around four or five years it s been since we were last together.
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I m speaking about Dan Buettner.
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an Explorer, National Geographic Fellow, award-winning journalist and producer, and New York Times best-selling author.
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Dan discovered the five places in the world dubbed Blue Zones hotspots, where people live the longest, healthiest lives.
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In Dan s new book that I have right now, The Blue Zone, Secrets for Living Longer, Lessons from the Healthiest Places on Earth, Dan talks about his travels and journeys of living and learning from people all over the world that we ll dive into today.
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I want you to grab a copy of this book.
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It beautifully synthesizes and summarizes really complex and difficult ideas and really, really simple and beautiful ones in a way that you can practice them and bring them to life in yours and the people you love.
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Welcome to the show, Dan Buettner.
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Dan, thank you for being here.
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a master.
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It s a complete joy to see you again and to be here in your studio.
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Yeah and congratulations on your documentary too on Netflix.
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I mean it s been received exceptionally well.
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If anyone hasn t seen it yet make sure you go and see that and get the book at the same time.
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It s so beautiful because when we met you d been dedicated to this work for so long already
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And the fact that it s now having another resurgence and it s becoming even more mainstream, which I love because I think these ideas need to be mainstream.
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Talk to us just about how long you ve been fascinated and obsessed about this journey and how amazing it is.
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You just said a moment ago outside to me, you said, you know, I thought the work had had its course, but here it is again.
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It s timeless.
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1999, I read a study in the World Health Organization finding that Okinawa, Japan produces the longest lived disability-free lives in the world.
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I thought, aha, that s a great mystery.
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And I did a very quick expedition there and became personally on fire about the topic.
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And then in 2004, I got an assignment from National Geographic and a grant from the National Institutes on Aging.
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and wrote a cover story for National Geographic.
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And the idea here, Jay, was, you know, so many, it s very hot in Silicon Valley right now to search for longevity hacks or anti-aging nostrums and so forth.
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And instead of looking for secret to longevity in a test tube or some sort of genetic code,
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We very methodically found these five areas where people are living measurably longer, and then because only about 20% of how long we live is dictated by our genes, 80% is something else, then we took teams of scientists to find the common denominators and the correlates.
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And I think the reason the Netflix series is resonating so much right now is because in our fast-paced world, where we re constantly looking for answers in technology, we ve overlooked this wonderful repository of time-honored wisdom that if we stop, pay attention, you can see not only is there plenty of evidence that these approaches work, but also it offers a path to longevity that s enjoyable.
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Absolutely and I m so happy that you re shining a light on that because I think it s so interesting how obsessed we can get and even how stressed we can get about our health and almost when you go back to these very grassroots ways and methods and approaches it s so much more natural and organic but walk us through that you said 20% is genes what s the other 80%?
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Maybe 10% is healthcare, how good your insurance is, how much access you have to hospitals and doctors.
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But the other 70% or so, I argue it is largely your environment.
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We spend over $150 billion a year on diets and exercise programs.
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But if you look at the duration of how long those last, it s measured in months or maybe a year and a half or so.
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And when it comes to longevity, there s no short-term fix.
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There s no pill, there s no supplement.
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It is the sum of lots of small improvements to your lives aggregated over decades.
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That s what works.
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And I ve been shown nothing else that can work in the short run.
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So that 70% is how you set up your environment so that you are unconsciously nudged to do things that favor longevity and nudged away from the things that we know take away from health and vitality.
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That s kind of the general idea.
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And I love that idea about environment.
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I think the challenge is today that a lot of us would find that environments we grow up in or environments we live and work in are almost set up against longevity.
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Yes.
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Would you agree with that?
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And what are some of the ways in which we almost have to not fight, but we have to almost defend, protect and create environments to grow and be abundant in?
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So we re in Los Angeles right now.
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I happen to know that the average Angeleno spends 47 hours a year, not just in traffic, stopped in traffic.
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In places that are walkable, where there are bike lanes, where there are nice wide sidewalks with trees, so they re aesthetically pleasing, cleaned up playground, the physical activity level of the entire community is 20% higher.
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So we live in a nation where fewer than 24% of people get the minimum amount of physical activity, which is only about 20 minutes.
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So just by living in a walkable neighborhood, you re probably going to get more physical activity over the long term than you are signing up for a gym.
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The other problems are food environment.
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You know, we evolved
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with genetic hardwiring to favor salt, favor sugar, yearn for fat, and take rest whenever we can.
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That served us very well in an environment of scarcity and difficulty like we evolved in.
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But now we live in this environment where we re never more than five steps away from a salty snack or a soda or hamburger or pizza.
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And our genes lust for that.
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And we can try to deploy
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discipline or presence of mind to overcome it three or four times, but the sixth time you re confronted by it in a day, you know, that discipline muscle wears out.
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Next thing you re, you know, eating that Snickers or digging into that bag of chips and, and, uh,
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It s hard to wake your finger at Americans and say it s your responsibility to eat healthy when 97 out of a 100 choices out there for most people aren t healthy.
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I want to dive into all the lessons and the insights that we can make shifts.
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How have you found people being able to apply the blue zones work in their modern lives in these big cities in places where 97 out of a 100 options are unhealthy or
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toxic or whatever they may be.
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What examples have you seen?
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What have you learned about people actually making changes and transformations in their life?
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So I have two answers, and first I ll take it at the community level.
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So my daytime job for most of the last 13 years has been working with cities.
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We re publicly endorsed but privately funded, so we don t get involved with people worried about spending tax dollars.
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We ve gone into cities like Fort Worth, Texas, Naples, Florida, Jacksonville, the whole state of Hawaii,
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And instead of trying to get people to try to convince people to eat mostly a plant-based diet and get physical activity, we work with city council to help them identify policies that favor healthy food over junk food, that favor the pedestrian over the motorist, that favor the non-smoker over the smoker.
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And we don t come in telling cities what to do.
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Nobody wants to be told what to do.
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We bring them menus and then we go through every item on that policy menu and assess it for number one, effective.
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Do people in this room from the public and private sector think it d be effective in this city?
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And two, is it feasible?
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Is there enough sort of political equity to get these things done?
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And in every city, we re able to find a half a dozen to a dozen policies that float to the top.
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and my team could get it implemented.
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And that s the biggest.
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According to the CDC, the most powerful lever we have to create a healthier America is policy.
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It s the most cost effective.
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But then we also have a Blue Zones certification program for restaurants, grocery stores, workplaces, and schools.
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In over five years, we can usually get 30 to 40% of those places to agree to optimize their designs
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and their policies so people mindlessly move more, eat better, cafeterias are healthier with healthier choices, socialize more, we all know loneliness kills, and then know and live their purpose.
1
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And it only works when you re comprehensive and from the time people wake up till the time they go to bed, they are
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nudged, unconsciously nudged into slightly better behaviors over the period of decades.
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And in every city we worked in, and Gallup measures this, we ve seen the obesity rate go down, life satisfaction go up, and healthcare go down a lot.
1
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And in a country where we re spending $4.4 trillion on healthcare, that s an important consideration.
1
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Yeah, absolutely.
1
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I mean, it s incredible to have these very, I love how you re approaching it almost from a very macro level, like in the sense of it s not just about micro habit changes, it s about redesigning entire cities, or reformatting entire cities, which I was fascinated when we first met and you walked me through the models and I remember you showing us
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how you were thinking parks and spaces could be redesigned and how schools and homes and how they all need to be close to each other and I was thinking wow this is it s such a practical but macro level.
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I want to dive into some of these areas because I want to give people a small tour of this beautiful book that you ve created and of course highly recommend that everyone grabs the book for all the full details but the blue zones are Sardinia, Nicoya, Loma Linda, Ikaria, Okinawa and Singapore and so they re not necessarily the most
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they re not predictable and they re not places that you d go, oh yeah, I know that place.
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Like, of course those people live a long time.
1
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They re, they re, they re, and I ve only been to, I ve been to Sardinia before and I remember going and meeting with some of the people then I was totally blown away.
1
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I ve been to Singapore before and I met some local individuals, but I wanted to dive into a couple of areas that I highlighted.
1
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So I want to talk a little bit about a few things that may sound counterintuitive to people.
1
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One of these ones was the plant-based diet because I think a lot of people right now there s a lot of debate over plant-based versus meat-based diet but this was something that you saw across the board as quite a strong indicator of longevity.
1
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I think people should eat what makes them feel the best and I m not here to tell people what to eat, but I m also right for National Geographic and my feet are held to the fire.
1
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So if I want to talk about a diet of longevity, our process was to
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aggregate dietary surveys in all five blue zones.
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Universities go out and find what the population is eating.
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And we did that for over the past 80 years.
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So 155 dietary surveys over 80 years.
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So we know what a centenarian was eating when they were 20 and what they were eating when they were newly retired and recently.
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I had oversight from Harvard to do what s called a meta-analysis.
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And if you really want to know what a centenarian has eaten most of his or her life,
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It is about 90 to 95% whole plant-based food.
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Contrary to sort of the popular keto diets and so forth, it s very high in carbohydrates, but complex carbohydrates.
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Both jelly beans and lentil beans are carbohydrates, and obviously, you know, in a way, carbohydrates is the worst word in the nutritional dictionary, because I would argue simple carbohydrates, like jelly beans, are the most toxic components of our diet.
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whereas beans is the most healthy.
1
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The five pillars of every longevity diet in the world are whole grains, greens, and other garden vegetables.
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It s all seasonal.
1
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Tubers, like sweet potatoes, in Okinawa until 1970, about 65 to 70 percent of all the calories consumed were from purple sweet potatoes.
1
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a nuts as a snack, and then the cornerstone of every longevity diet in the world is beans.
1
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And if you re eating a cup of beans a day, it s probably worth about four years of extra life expectancy.
1
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They do eat meat, and I readily acknowledge that.
1
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The Adventists don t all eat meat, but in all blue zones, on average, they were eating meat about five times per month.
1
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The average American eats about 220 pounds of meat a year.
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which is just too much.
1
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I think there s plenty of evidence to show that that level of meat consumption is highly associated with about a doubling or tripling of your chances of cardiovascular disease and even type 2 diabetes.
1
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In blue zones, they might be consuming 20 pounds of meat a year and it s a celebratory food.
1
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It s usually from an animal that s had a pretty decent life.
1
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Not to say that that justifies killing it, but it s just a whole different way of consuming meat in much lower quantities.
1
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So is there room for meat in people s diet?
1
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Probably, but a lot less than I think we re consuming.
1
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Yeah and I love how you ve connected and I mean the amount of analysis that s been done is truly remarkable and obviously the amount of years, the fact that you know what someone is eating at 20 years old and what they ve eaten for their whole life is pretty phenomenal.
1
SPEAKER_03
One of these ones that you had here was laughing with friends and you know I think laughter is, laughter and crying both are such
1
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underestimated emotions and expressions and I almost feel like I wonder if every one of us who s listening and watching right now did a personal audit on how much we laughed per week.
1
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Oh yeah.
1
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I d be intrigued to see how many of us and I would love that everyone who s listening and watching just for the next seven days
1
SPEAKER_03
It sounds like a stupid activity, and maybe this makes you laugh, and that s great.
1
SPEAKER_03
Write down how many times you truly laughed, not just like ha ha ha, but like truly laughed every day.
1
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What did you discover about the importance of laughter?
1
SPEAKER_03
Because that sounds like such a subtle, soft, small thing, but you put it in the book.
1
SPEAKER_00
The Therapy for Black Girls podcast is an NAACP and Webby Award winning podcast dedicated to all things mental health, personal development, and all of the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves.
1
SPEAKER_00
Here, we have the conversations that help black women decipher how their past inform who they are today.
1
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and use that information to decide who they want to be moving forward.
1
SPEAKER_00
We chat about things like how to establish routines that center self-care, what burnout looks and feels like, and defining what aspects of our lives are making us happy and what parts are holding us back.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m your host, Dr. Joy Harden-Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I can t wait for you to join the conversation every Wednesday.
1
SPEAKER_00
Listen to the Therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1
SPEAKER_00
Take good care, and we ll see you there.
1
SPEAKER_01
Get emotional with me, Radhi Devlukia, in my new podcast, A Really Good Cry.
1
SPEAKER_01
We re going to talk about and go through all the things that are sometimes difficult to process alone.
1
SPEAKER_01
We re going to go over how to regulate your emotions, diving deep into holistic personal development, and just building your mindset to have a happier, healthier life.
2
SPEAKER_02
We re going to be talking with some of my best friends.
2
SPEAKER_02
I didn t know we were going to go there on this.
2
SPEAKER_02
People that I admire.
2
SPEAKER_02
When we say listen to your body, really tune into what s going on.
2
SPEAKER_02
Authors of books that have changed my life.
2
SPEAKER_02
Now you re talking about sympathy, which is different than empathy, right?
2
SPEAKER_02
And basically have conversations that can help us get through this crazy thing we call life.
2
SPEAKER_02
I already believe in myself.
2
SPEAKER_02
I already see myself.
2
SPEAKER_02
And so when people give me an opportunity, I m just like,
2
SPEAKER_02
Oh great, you see me too!
2
SPEAKER_02
We ll laugh together, we ll cry together, and find a way through all of our emotions.
2
SPEAKER_02
Never forget, it s okay to cry, as long as you make it a really good one.
2
SPEAKER_02
Listen to A Really Good Cry with Radhi Devlukia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
2
SPEAKER_00
Tune in to the new podcast, Stories from the Village of Nothing Much.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like easy listening, but for fiction.
2
SPEAKER_00
If you ve overdosed on bad news, we invite you into a world where the glimmers of goodness in everyday life are all around you.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m Katherine Nicolai, and you might know me from the Bedtime Story podcast, Nothing Much Happens.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m an architect of cozy, and I invite you to come spend some time where everyone is welcome and kindness is the default.
2
SPEAKER_00
When you tune in, you ll hear stories about bakeries and walks in the woods, a favorite booth at the diner on a blustery autumn day, cats and dogs, unrescued goats and donkeys, old houses, bookshops, beaches where kites fly, and pretty stones are found.
2
SPEAKER_00
I have so many stories to tell you, and they are all designed to help you feel good and feel connected to what is good in the world.
2
SPEAKER_00
Listen, relax, enjoy.
2
SPEAKER_00
Listen to stories from the Village of Nothing Much on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
2
SPEAKER_03
Well, it s hard to quantify, quite honestly, but where that comes from, the word sardonic, which is a type of kind of slightly biting but good-natured humor, comes from Sardinia, and it very much pervades the culture.
2
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There s a lot of sort of ribbing, good-natured ribbing of each other.
2
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And that s sort of a social currency.
2
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So when they get together at the end of the day for their glass of wine or two, they re not sitting around griping about politics or what the left is doing or what the right is doing.
2
SPEAKER_03
They re poking fun of each other or the shepherd over the hill.
2
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And so that s an anecdotal observation, but it just seemed to be one of the propellants of a very hearty and healthy social life.
2
SPEAKER_03
I wrote the cover story for National Geographic in 2005.
2
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I don t think anybody was connecting social, the quality of your social relations with health or longevity until my first articles and books were.
2
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And I think there s a general realization that transcends blue zones that, you know, if you could put the health
2
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full properties of a good social life in a tablet, it would be a billion dollar blockbuster drug.
2
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Having at least three friends who you can laugh with, who care about you on a bad day is worth about eight years of life expectancy over being alone.
2
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And I don t know of any other supplement or pill that will give you anywhere near that.
2
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We inherently know that.
2
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Like when someone hears that, they sound, yeah, yeah, I have three friends.
2
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But I think like you said, it s the topic of conversation, it s the energetic exchange, it s the vulnerability and the depth of that relationship that seems to be stifled.
2
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Like you re saying, we re all searching for the magic pill, but you re saying actually just having three friends that you can call on a bad day is actually going to increase your life expectancy greater than any pill you could take.
2
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Just to think about that for a second, you make it sound so easy, but that s a really powerful point.
2
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But we maybe don t engage as effectively with three people in our life.
2
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Where have we gone wrong in that social space?
2
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What did you kind of come across?
2
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There s this great Harvard researcher named Robert Putnam.
2
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He wrote a book called Bowling Alone.
2
SPEAKER_03
And when he first wrote it in the late 80s, he calculated that the average American has three friends.
2
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He now calculates we re down to under two.
2
SPEAKER_03
So we may think that we re socially connected, but as a nation, we re getting less and less socially connected.
2
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And I think part of it is this thing right here.
2
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We re using this as a proxy for the face-to-face conversations like we re having right now, which isn t nearly as good.
2
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Part of it is our environment.
2
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We spend about twice as much time in our cars than we did in 1980.
2
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If we re in our cars, we re not out walking
2
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interacting with people and having those serendipitous social interactions that can lead to friendships.
2
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We spend four and a half hours a day, at least, interacting with our screens.
2
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Yet again, another time taken away from social interaction.
2
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And we are humans.
2
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The reason why we re successful over other simians is that we have this capacity to feel empathy for each other, to cooperate with each other.
2
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And at the end of the day, most things that feel good
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favor our health and our longevity.
2
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That s why we get hungry and it feels good to eat or, you know, we get that little urge and it feels good to have sex.
2
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These are all things that sort of favor the thriving of our species.
2
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Yeah, I want to pick out a few things that really resonated with me there.
2
SPEAKER_01
First is you spoke about serendipitous moments and I think that that s such a, again, it s become so random or rare now to bump into someone at a grocery store and start a conversation where in a line
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SPEAKER_01
at anywhere whether it s the doctors whether it s a store whatever it may be and everyone s on their phone and it would be rare or actually we d see as weird if someone said hello to us we d kind of look around going like are you okay like what do you need it would be uncomfortable and i actually think that when those
2
SPEAKER_01
synchronous or serendipitous moments happen where you kind of have a moment of surprise or delight or you bump into someone that feels familiar.
2
SPEAKER_01
I had this happen to me through a work thing last week.
2
SPEAKER_01
We were going on a work project, one person on the team hadn t come to an event yet, we hit it off immediately and it felt like serendipity and it was through work and I was just like I want to build a relationship with this person and I often feel that way.
2
SPEAKER_01
because I moved country and I moved city so I moved from London to New York to now LA I ve had the positive pressure of having to rebuild community and I remember when I moved to New York and then moved to LA I said to my wife I was like we re not just I m not just trying to build my career I want to build community at the same time because you can t really have one without the other I could have an amazing career here but if I don t have community how meaningful is my career going to feel and so they were both
2
SPEAKER_01
pursuits and efforts and i remember having this really and i still do it today and i m 36 years old and i m not shy about it if i connect with someone or if i enjoy someone s company i ll just say hey do you want to come over for dinner let s hang out and i try and avoid going out for dinner and i try and avoid going to bars and restaurants because i find them to be loud i find them to be
2
SPEAKER_01
impersonal and I found them also to be short like you go out for dinner for an hour and a half and then everyone look at their phone and leave and I almost think that if there s someone that I deeply want to connect with I d rather meet them one-on-one and if they can come over to my apartment or my home or whatever it may be that intimate time and ordering food in kind of creates more time you re now going to spend three hours with someone it s likely that you re going to extend that period of time and another thing that s been massive in helping me is I think often we hide in groups
2
SPEAKER_01
So we go out with big groups, we go out with 20 people, we go out with 30 people and you then end up having or you go out with six people and you end up having five shallow conversations as opposed to one or two deeper ones.
2
SPEAKER_01
Now I m not saying I don t hang out in groups, I do and I enjoy it and my wife and I throw regular game nights and we love that kind of stuff but I also crave deep intimate
2
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valuable conversation as well.
2
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And I know my friends do.
2
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And so to me, I ve, I ve tried really, really hard.
2
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And sometimes, you know, you wear your heart on your sleeve and you say to someone, Hey, do you want to hang out?
2
SPEAKER_01
And they re like, no.
2
SPEAKER_01
And, and it s okay because I feel like if, if I do feel that with someone and someone feels it back with me, that s the beginning of a beautiful friendship as an adult.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I feel like we make less friends as adults than obviously we did as kids.
2
SPEAKER_01
And especially for men, especially.
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
Interesting.
2
SPEAKER_01
Go ahead.
2
SPEAKER_01
Sorry.
2
SPEAKER_03
No, I d actually like to explore this idea of the positive pressure to socialize.
2
SPEAKER_03
I think there are a lot of Americans who would love more social interaction.
2
SPEAKER_03
It s just hard.
2
SPEAKER_03
And I m wondering what you, like, if you re a middle-aged American living in Iowa in a small town,
2
SPEAKER_03
How would you use this positive pressure and actually start to build network or build meaningful relationships?
2
SPEAKER_01
I find places of equal value, and that could be a bar, a restaurant, a pool bar, a darts place, I don t know, I m thinking places that people in England definitely go to connect, like, you know, I think sports.
2
SPEAKER_01
To me, finding, this has happened recently to me here, it s like, and I know this isn t Iowa, but the idea of,
2
SPEAKER_01
I have made so many new friends simply playing pickleball.
2
SPEAKER_01
So pickleball has taken over the nation.
2
SPEAKER_01
I go to a local
3
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park like literally 10 minutes down the road I go there and I play and if we ve lost a doubles partner or whatever we ll go up to someone random or someone will come up to us and say hey are you guys looking for another pair and we re like yeah sure and all of a sudden you re on a text thread and you re all friends and you re playing pickleball together twice a week and
3
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And so I found that sports, places of equal value, I think charities and give back opportunities are amazing places.
3
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I think there are so many social networks inside a city that we re not even aware of.
3
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Obviously people s schools and your children s schools and communities.
3
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I think there are just so many opportunities to meet like-minded people.
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And I think if we go there wanting to connect and find people of equal value, I think it s possible.
3
SPEAKER_02
And so I don t know, I ve never been to iOS, so I can t speak specifically for there, but I definitely feel like getting into places of finding
3
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tangents to connect on.
3
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I don t think you re going to bump into someone at a grocery store.
3
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I don t think you re going to bump into someone on the street anymore.
3
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It doesn t work like that, but you will bump into someone if you went to a class, a course, a program, an event.
3
SPEAKER_02
I went on a world tour this year.
3
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We went to nearly 40 cities across the world and I had people who turned up to my show single, alone,
3
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came by themselves and left with a group of friends.
3
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I love that part.
3
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I think that s possible because you re going to a place where you feel safe.
3
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And they share interests, obviously.
3
SPEAKER_01
Correct, share interests.
3
SPEAKER_01
Exploring what you re and probably sharing values.
3
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s just that we re sort of relentlessly marketed that the path to health is through this diet program or this exercise program or these supplements or a longevity hack.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the realization that
3
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quality social interaction is probably better for your health than any of those things.
3
SPEAKER_01
Marketers can t make money off of it so you don t hear about it.
3
SPEAKER_01
To your point about Pickleball, I think it is the most important social innovation that America has seen in the last three decades.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m also a Pickleball fanatic.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I love it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and we have this place where I ll just show up
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at nine o clock in the morning alone and within 10 minutes I m playing a game and often because there s so much kind of talking back and forth, by the end of it I have the seeds of three new friendships and after three months it s a community.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think it s a wonderful thing.
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A few other things that have worked for me this past summer, I visited Minnesota some, I want to expand my social circle.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I started, I just went through my own context, just one by one and thought, yeah, that s a person who s a healthy and I m interested in and I d like to get to know.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I just made Tuesday and Thursday afternoons lunch days because it was a low bar, you know, for me to ask somebody to come to lunch with me, I ll pay.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, and instead of investing in a diet program or something, or, you know, some supplements, I, you know, had eight lunches and out of that eight lunches, three of those people are, you know, more of a, I would say in my immediate social circle now.
3
SPEAKER_02
So there s ways
3
SPEAKER_02
to do that.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah that s brilliant, super practical.
3
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Another one that stuck out and I want to go into so many more but this one kind of on that community element and again potentially more anecdotal but really powerful and a big part of how we lived in the monastery and how I was raised celebrating elders
3
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And I love that idea because one of my wife s favorite people in the world or her favorite person in the world is her grandmother who s thankfully still with us and she loves celebrating her, she loves spending time with her, she loves learning from her.
3
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A few years ago she sat down and interviewed her just for herself so she d have those memories to hold on to her grandma s experiences.
3
SPEAKER_02
She went and asked her grandmother to share with her like old photos and all of this kind of stuff.
3
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When I think about my monk teachers who are twice my age and celebrating them and being present with them and learning from them.
3
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I think celebrating elders is such a part of society that s completely been lost but especially in Sardinia that stood out.
3
SPEAKER_02
Walk us through what you saw there.
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It s very easy to map respect of elders as a longevity strategy for a community.
3
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So you go into these sort of old man bars up in the mountains, and instead of seeing the sports illustrated swimsuit of the month, you would see the centenarian of the month.
3
SPEAKER_01
They actually have that?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yes.
3
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In Bonai, it s called, in the cluster of the blue zone.
3
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I mean, that s just an outward manifestation.
3
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But in Sardinia, it would shame the family to put your aging parent in a retirement home.
3
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So they all stay nearby or usually living in the home.
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And they re not just recipients of care.
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I think a lot of people are afraid of that.
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They re expected to participate.
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So the women are helping with childcare.
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They are the keepers of the food tradition.
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The men, they re still advising when to plant, when to sow.
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They know how to make that wonderful Blue Zones wine, which has very high levels of antioxidants.
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SPEAKER_01
So it s this beautiful virtuous circle where older people are told they matter.
3
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They re given a reason to get up in the morning, to take their meds, to stay physically fit, to eat right.
3
SPEAKER_01
So they re living longer.
3
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And then there s something called the grandmother effect that shows that a household with a grandmother living in it, or at least nearby, grandfather or grandmother, those children have lower rates of mortality and lower rates of disease.
3
SPEAKER_01
So this circle is what sort of,
3
SPEAKER_01
Think of it an upward ratcheting of the life expectancy of the whole community.
3
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And that becomes harder, like even for us, like we ve moved away.
3
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We re not close to our own parents.
3
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And of course our grandparents are getting older as well.
3
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And it s harder when you ve, the world is growing and the world is getting bigger and you re moving and traveling more.
3
SPEAKER_02
Is there a way of keeping that connection through phones, through FaceTimes, through visits?
3
SPEAKER_02
Like does it, can it still have a similar impact or?
3
SPEAKER_01
or even more immediate, have a surrogate grandparent.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s a Yale researcher named Becca Levy who found that just having a positive attitude towards aging lowers your mortality by about 40%.
3
SPEAKER_01
And part of that is having older people in your life and learning from their wisdom and honoring it, not forcing them to retire, but finding a way for their wisdom to put work, even though they might not have as much fluid intelligence as they had when they were 30.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, absolutely.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, no, I have a lot of, that makes me feel really good.
3
SPEAKER_02
I m really happy you brought that up as such a research point.
3
SPEAKER_02
I definitely have people in LA that I see as those elders in my life and in my world that can replace those people that I don t always have access to.
3
SPEAKER_02
That s really powerful.
3
SPEAKER_02
A couple of things that I want to surprise people with, because this was huge, a couple of fun ones.
3
SPEAKER_02
This, ideal to drink seven cups of green tea a day.
3
SPEAKER_02
I think this was on your TikTok.
3
SPEAKER_02
Seven cups of green tea to walk me through that.
3
SPEAKER_02
That sounds like a lot.
3
SPEAKER_02
Hard to do.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was just in Kyoto last week with a researcher who actually very clearly mapped it to frailty.
3
SPEAKER_01
Seven is ideal, but as little as three cups of green tea a day is associated with about four extra years of healthy life expectancy.
3
SPEAKER_01
And we don t know why.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, you can guess it s probably the antioxidants or the ketchikins, they call.
3
SPEAKER_01
But there s probably 1,500 compounds in green tea.
3
SPEAKER_01
We don t know for sure.
3
SPEAKER_01
But green tea s been around for a long time.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it s consumed daily in volume by at least two of these blue zones.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it s one of these things that rather than turn to the superfood or the super beverage, why not drink what we
3
SPEAKER_01
Learn from our ancestors who ve achieved the outcomes we want, which is a long, healthy life.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, absolutely.
3
SPEAKER_02
My wife and I created this sparkling adaptogenic tea called Juni, and we put one cup of green tea in there.
3
SPEAKER_02
And so that s one of the seven, at least.
3
SPEAKER_02
I m doing this for my longevity.
3
SPEAKER_02
It s got zero grams of sugar in it.
3
SPEAKER_02
It s delicious.
3
SPEAKER_02
Thank you.
3
SPEAKER_02
It s got zero grams of sugar in it, only five calories.
3
SPEAKER_02
It s all natural products.
3
SPEAKER_02
It s, you know, it was, it was part of that.
3
SPEAKER_02
Like, how do you create something that s fun and healthy at the same time?
3
SPEAKER_02
And I m glad you enjoyed it.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s right.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that competes with the sugar sweetened beverages and much, much better off grabbing a Juni than a Pepsi.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_02
No, but no, but that was the goal.
3
SPEAKER_02
It was like, I think it s about what we, what you re doing here as well.
3
SPEAKER_02
It s about how do we make,
3
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alternatives accessible and how do we make healthy options accessible?
3
SPEAKER_01
That s right.
3
SPEAKER_01
You hit the nail on the head.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
And easy.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
And you remove the friction of price.
3
SPEAKER_02
Correct.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m Katherine Nicolai, and you might know me from the Bedtime Story podcast, Nothing Much Happens.
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I m an architect of cozy, and I invite you to come spend some time where everyone is welcome and kindness is the default.
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When you tune in, you ll hear stories about bakeries and walks in the woods, a favorite booth at the diner on a blustery autumn day, cats and dogs and rescued goats and donkeys, old houses, bookshops,
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I have so many stories to tell you, and they are all designed to help you feel good and feel connected to what is good in the world.
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Listen, relax, enjoy.
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Listen to stories from the Village of Nothing Much on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Something that makes me crazy is when people say, well, I had this career before, but it was a waste.
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And that s where the perspective shift comes.
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That it s not a waste, that everything you ve done has built you to where you are now.
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It s a podcast about women, their stories, and how their pivot became their success.
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Listen to She Pivots on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine every weekday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, I named Singapore a Blue Zone 2.0.
4
SPEAKER_00
And the reason is in one lifetime, life expectancy has jumped 20 years.
4
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They now have the highest health adjusted life expectancy in the world.
4
SPEAKER_00
So they live the longest, healthiest life.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s not some coincidence from some ancient culture.
4
SPEAKER_00
They very deliberately went about making unhealthy food more expensive and harder to get.
4
SPEAKER_00
So for example, they tax sugar.
4
SPEAKER_00
We all know sugar s not good for us.
4
SPEAKER_00
A Coke in Singapore has 20% less sugar than the same Coke in America.
4
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So they ve mandated it, it has to be less sugar.
4
SPEAKER_00
Meanwhile, they subsidize things we know are good for us, like brown rice.
4
SPEAKER_00
They know that driving, especially in traffic, is bad for the air.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s bad for, you know, kids get killed in accidents.
4
SPEAKER_00
You don t get much physical activity when you re sitting in the car.
4
SPEAKER_00
So they ve made car driving incredibly expensive.
4
SPEAKER_00
$100,000 just to have the right to drive a car, 300% tax on top of that.
4
SPEAKER_00
Therefore, 89% of people in Singapore walk.
4
SPEAKER_00
Eighty-nine percent.
4
SPEAKER_00
Eighty-nine percent.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Only 11 percent of people own cars in Singapore.
4
SPEAKER_00
But what that means is that there s all this tax revenue that they re able to sink into a fast, efficient, clean, air-conditioned, wonderful public transport system.
4
SPEAKER_00
And nobody s more than about 300 meters away from fast, much faster than driving public transportation.
4
SPEAKER_00
You know what the side benefit of that is?
4
SPEAKER_00
Everybody takes about 7,500 steps a day without even thinking about it.
4
SPEAKER_00
So they re already ahead of 75% of Americans just getting to work in the morning or going out to see their friends or going out to eat because they re walking to the subway.
4
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s the way American policy makers need to start thinking if we really want a healthier America.
4
SPEAKER_01
Are you working on the policy shifts too?
4
SPEAKER_01
Is that a big part of your focus?
4
SPEAKER_01
Or do you have to work on local policy?
4
SPEAKER_00
I m working with one of my favorite congressmen, Dean Phillips, about a Design for a Healthier America bill that would provide block grants for cities to do this kind of work.
4
SPEAKER_00
So designing for, setting Americans up for health
4
SPEAKER_00
Right now we re set up for ill health in this country, I hate to say it.
4
SPEAKER_00
So it s just, instead of the $4.4 trillion a year we spend cleaning up America s health mess, getting ahead of it, which is a much better investment, and it also avoids lots of suffering and lots of premature death.
4
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, speaking on that, you know, one of the things I wanted to ask you is what are things that Americans do currently that are seen as healthy?
4
SPEAKER_01
but are actually causing us to gain weight and live a shorter life?
4
SPEAKER_01
Are there certain things that you think are marketed, promoted or focused on for us to become healthier that are having the opposite impact?
4
SPEAKER_00
Anytime anybody markets you as superfood you can be pretty sure it s not.
4
SPEAKER_00
Many if not most of them have added sugars or processed ingredients which aren t all that good for you.
4
SPEAKER_00
Basically any packaged food that trumpets some health benefit, it s probably not all that good for you.
4
SPEAKER_00
In blue zones, the foods they eat have one ingredient, you know, as it comes out of the ground for the most part.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s combined in wonderfully delicious ways, but it s not processed.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it s seasonal too, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
It s often seasonal, but several of the blue zones only have two growing seasons, so they still have to get through winter.
4
SPEAKER_00
The cornerstone of all these longevity diets are beans and grains, which store beautifully for years at a time.
4
SPEAKER_00
And those sort of get people through the times where their gardens aren t producing.
4
SPEAKER_00
By the way, we put enormous burden on ourselves trying to tell Americans that they need to eat fresh fruits and vegetables.
4
SPEAKER_00
You go into the inner city, a lot of people don t know what to do with fresh fruits and vegetables, they don t have a taste for them.
4
SPEAKER_00
A much greater, easier solution is beans and rice, beans and corn tortilla, beans and pasta, pasta fagioli.
4
SPEAKER_00
Whenever you have a bean and a grain and you put them together, you have a whole protein.
4
SPEAKER_00
They re cheap, almost every ethnicity knows how to cook them and make them taste delicious.
4
SPEAKER_00
They re usually fast to combine and cook.
4
SPEAKER_00
We would serve Americans much better if we sent the message to eat healthy, to start your journey to perhaps living to 100, eat beans and rice.
4
SPEAKER_01
What s really hard is, I m listening to you and I see this as the challenge too, it s like,
4
SPEAKER_01
It almost seems like all of our bad decisions, whether it s what we eat, whether we walk, whether we work out, are primarily based on high levels of stress.
4
SPEAKER_01
So when we re stressed you re going to reach for unhealthy food because it makes you feel better, when you re stressed you re more likely to reach for sugar, when you re stressed you re more likely to
4
SPEAKER_01
sleep in or try to sleep in or have bad sleep and then you don t have energy to work out.
4
SPEAKER_01
You re more likely to skip a workout or skip walking because you feel stressed.
4
SPEAKER_01
You want to rush home in your car and just get in front of the TV and so so much of our choices are all based on a lot of stress and obviously in the blue zones they don t have a stressful life I imagine.
4
SPEAKER_00
You re right, fundamentally, that stress drives poor decisions.
4
SPEAKER_00
And also, if we re eating a meal and we re stressed, you re mixing, you re interrupting the digestion process with cortisol, which is not good for you.
4
SPEAKER_00
But people in blue zones suffer stress, just like we do.
4
SPEAKER_00
They worry about their kids, they worry about their finances, they worry about their health.
4
SPEAKER_00
If you re unhealthy and overweight in America, it s probably not your fault.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I ll tell you why.
4
SPEAKER_00
In 1980, about 15% of Americans were obese.
4
SPEAKER_00
Now it s 42% going to 43% of them.
4
SPEAKER_00
So almost tripling of the obesity rate.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s seven times as many people are suffering from type 2 diabetes or prediabetes.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s not because 35 years ago, people had more discipline or better diet programs, or they were better people, or they were exposed to less stresses.
4
SPEAKER_00
What has changed is our environment.
4
SPEAKER_00
I ve mentioned before, we re driving more.
4
SPEAKER_00
but also the number of fast food restaurants has gone up exponentially.
4
SPEAKER_00
Over 50% of all retail outlets, including the place you get your tires changed and the place you pick up your diabetes medicine, force you through a gauntlet of sugar-sweetened beverages, chips, and sodas.
4
SPEAKER_00
We make about 220 food decisions a day.
4
SPEAKER_00
only 10% of them are conscious.
4
SPEAKER_00
The other 200 or so have been orchestrated by marketing and by proximity and convenience and really mindless decisions.
4
SPEAKER_00
And to your point, some of those bad mindless decisions are because of stress, but most of it is because of our unhealthy environment.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I ve always said that being plant-based has saved me from those gauntlets because I can t eat any of it because all of it has some sort of dairy or some sort of animal in it and it s like that s the only reason me and my wife talk about that all the time whenever we walk past
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We was donuts and pastries and we re just like, gosh, if I wasn t plant-based, I would be, because I have a massive sweet tooth.
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I grew up eating a ton of sugar.
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I was exposed to it since I was a kid.
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And so it s taken me years to curb that.
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But the thing that saves me the most from exactly what you re talking about right now, the donut shop, the pizza shop, the whatever is I m plant-based.
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And that s the only thing that saves me.
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I hate to tell you there are plant-based donuts.
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Oh, no, there are.
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Yeah, I know.
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Luckily, I live... I call it a well-rounded meal.
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No, so I m going to put it out.
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There is an amazing, if you live in LA, there is an amazing plant-based donut place called Donut Friend.
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It is unbelievable.
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And I am so lucky that I live like over 30 minutes away from it.
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And so thinking about driving for 30 minutes there and 30 minutes back to get a donut they don t deliver to where I live is like, that saves me again.
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SPEAKER_01
Van Leeuwen is too close though, that s vegan ice cream.
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Just imagine if there were, you came out your driveway, every time you came out your driveway there was a special little donut vendor right there.
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Totally.
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And that s what most Americans are confronted with, the convenience stores.
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It s hard.
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No matter where you shop, you re tempted by this stuff and we re set up for really a tough time.
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One of the things you mentioned again on your TikTok was you said that you believe the best weight loss tool is the scale.
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I wanted to ask you about that because I think for a lot of people getting on a scale is stressful.
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It s like anxiety inducing.
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They look at it and it makes them more aware of a number and now they get focused on a number and if they don t make that number they judge themselves and criticize themselves or they call themselves fat or ugly or name, you know, whatever it may be.
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So what were you trying to get at when you were sharing that?
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You re right.
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There is a minority of people who obsess about it.
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It s anxiety-inducing, but for the aggregate, people who step on a scale every day and confront their weight.
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And by the way, if your weight goes up, yeah, you re going to feel a little kick in the pants.
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But if your weight goes down, there s a little endorphin surge.
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It s a little reward.
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And setting up that system, putting a bathroom scale in your way, people who self-weigh every day after two years, weigh about eight pounds less than people who never self-weigh.
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So I actually have one of my little social groups from Los Angeles here.
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I used to live here.
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I still have four people and I hardly know, I ve seen them once in my life, but every day we email each other our weight.
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And it kind of keeps us doing it.
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We re accountable to somebody.
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And every one of us, our weight has gone down a little bit over the last decade or so.
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And for the average American male in 10 years, you can expect to gain an extra 10 years.
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So even among my little focus group, it s worked really quite well.
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Competition and collaboration together are really fascinating.
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Yeah, powerful.
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Yeah, it s why pickleball works for me.
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It s also why I think I have so many people I know do 10,000 step challenges within their family and most of those people are walking way over 10,000 steps simply because they re trying to beat someone in their family and then everyone s average is growing up.
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And so I think that making something competitive and collaborative is the genius of the social network, the fitness, the fun in life.
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So much of it comes from that.
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And I think we ve lost that.
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One of the strategies we deploy in our cities, it s an idea we took from Okinawa, the notion of a moai, a committed social circle.
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And we ll get four or 500 people to show up to a gym.
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We ll have them circle up according to what neighborhood they live in.
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We ask them a bunch of questions about, you know, are they religious, what their favorite food is, what they listen for music, and have them look at each other as these questions are being answered.
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And then we have them self-select in groups of five people.
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And a lot of these people are completely lonely.
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And once they self-select in these clusters, we call them moais, we have them give themselves a name.
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And then we organize them around walking together.
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Everybody can walk together.
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And then we offer a little prize at the end of 10 weeks.
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What happens during that 10 weeks is not only are these people walking a lot more than they normally would, they re creating a social network or a social circle around walking that, in many cases, we know about 60% are still around four years later.
5
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So as you were starting to latch onto, it s the power of,
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collaboration but creating a social circle around a healthy behavior that s what s going to last and that s what s going to matter over time.
5
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely.
5
SPEAKER_01
I wanted to quickly jump back to diet and food because there s this great technique that you have and you mentioned and this was popular in parts of India that were teaching it from this perspective as well that the method you spoke about was being eight out of ten full when you re eating.
5
SPEAKER_01
And when we were trained about that, when we d hear about it from an Eastern or Vedic perspective, the idea of how breath is part of feeling full, and so food is not the only thing that your stomach is full on, was how I was introduced to that idea of being 7 tenths full or 8 tenths full, and the rest would be covered by breath.
5
SPEAKER_01
Of course there s water as well.
5
SPEAKER_01
Walk us through that idea of how we can all stop eating at 8 tenths full, because I think most of us wait till 10,
5
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Yeah.
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10 or 12.
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10 East.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, 10 East.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, exactly.
5
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Yeah.
5
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So it has its roots in Confucius.
5
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The Okinawans have this saying, hara hachi bu, which is a reminder to stop eating when their stomachs are 80% full.
5
SPEAKER_00
And they ll say that like a prayer before a meal.
5
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So instead of saying a grace or whatever, it s a reminder.
5
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I believe though much of it is actually done at the table.
5
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They tend to pre-plate their foods and put the leftovers away at the beginning of the meal instead of the end when you might be mindlessly eating.
5
SPEAKER_00
They don t have a TV, so they re not mindlessly eating to their favorite television show.
5
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They re sitting around with friends, slowing the meal down.
5
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It takes about 20 minutes from the full feeling to travel from your belly to your brain.
5
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And if you re wolfing your food down, if you re not breathing like you say, not drinking water, there s a pretty good chance you re going to overeat before you know it.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s so fascinating.
5
SPEAKER_01
How have they been able to, in these places, hold on to these traditions?
5
SPEAKER_01
Like even you were saying they
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I won t say it like you said it so the repetition even the reminder of hey let s stay eight tenths full at this meal how have they managed to hold on to these very old traditions and ideas and concepts in places that I m sure are being you know commercialized gentrified and all the rest of it like how have they managed to hold on to it?
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, it worked until about the year 2000 or 2005, because there haven t been outside influences.
5
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But in all these blue zones, the American food culture and the onslaught of ubiquitous media is starting to hit.
5
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It s lagged by 10 or 20 years, because these are remote areas.
5
SPEAKER_00
But as soon as the American food culture walks in the front door, longevity walks out the back.
5
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And all of these blue zones sadly are disappearing.
5
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They ll be gone I figure in about a half a generation.
5
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Okinawa is already no longer a blue zone.
5
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So yeah sadly they re making the same mistakes that we re making.
5
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You think in our lifetime that.
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Blue zones will probably be gone in about a decade and a half.
5
SPEAKER_00
The Nicoya blue zone has shrunk to about one-fifth its size.
5
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The Okinawan blue zone is gone, except for people 90 and over.
5
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You still have a blue zone in that demographic.
5
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Sardinia, you re starting to see fast food restaurants show up.
5
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Greece, Ikaria is doing a good job, and I ll tell you why.
5
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because the recognition they re getting as a blue zone has created an awareness of the incredible treasures that the older people are.
5
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And younger people in their 20s and 30s are bringing back these traditions and they re celebrating this diet that is producing longevity.
5
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And I have real hope for the Ikarian Blue Zone.
5
SPEAKER_01
Do you think that may be the last standing one?
5
SPEAKER_00
I think it ll be the last of the blue zone 1.0.
5
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The Singapore s I think there are more and my current project is to track down more of these areas where governments have been successful at manufacturing blue zones.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so I think those are going to be the most relevant lessons because, hey, let s face it, we live in 2023, and there are modern forces that we have to contend with.
5
SPEAKER_00
And the lifestyle that evolved beginning in 1500 isn t as useful.
5
SPEAKER_00
It provides lessons, and we can use it to, I think, model new environments and new policies.
5
SPEAKER_00
But it s not exactly an apples to apple.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, at a government level, at a decision-making level, what is making people care or not care?
5
SPEAKER_01
Because I think that s something people always think about, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
Like all of this makes so much sense.
5
SPEAKER_01
If I was in charge, I d say this is how we should be wanting to help people and support people and let s make it easier because my job on a day-to-day basis is so much about empowering the individual to make better choices, to find healthier options, to build discipline,
6
SPEAKER_05
in to almost deal with the onslaught and the gauntlet of everything.
6
SPEAKER_05
That s kind of my day job, right?
6
SPEAKER_05
That s what I m focused on here.
6
SPEAKER_05
But if I was in charge at state levels, I would want to see the changes you re making.
6
SPEAKER_05
What is incentivizing and enthusing people at that level to say, let s build Singapore 2.0 and more blue zones 2.0 versus what s people going, nah, it s all right.
6
SPEAKER_05
Like GDP is great.
6
SPEAKER_05
Like what is that?
6
SPEAKER_04
Yeah.
6
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Singapore realized a long time ago that its most important resource is its people.
6
SPEAKER_04
It s not some industry or not some commodity like a lot of places.
6
SPEAKER_04
And it has gone about a very disciplined way of looking at each policy through the lens of, does this increase the well-being of people or not?
6
SPEAKER_04
And they don t have the voice of a lobbyist speaking loudly in their ear, some sort of fundraising incentive to favor some big business.
6
SPEAKER_04
I think it really starts with electing leaders who care about, who put well-being first.
6
SPEAKER_04
Thomas Jefferson, in fact, I believe was the first American to say that the charge of any leader
6
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is the health and happiness of the people.
6
SPEAKER_04
And I think if we are able to, you know, I don t know, we can t do much about Washington, but we can do a lot in our own communities about the type of mayor and city councils that we elect.
6
SPEAKER_04
A lot of the best government in America right now is being done at the municipal level, not the federal level.
6
SPEAKER_04
And you can get a lot done in a hurry in a city or even at the county level.
6
SPEAKER_05
If someone wants to be involved or help or support and help their community in town become more of a blue zone, where would you suggest they start?
6
SPEAKER_04
Well, if you go to the Blue Zones website, there is a bluezones.com, there s a button about my community, and you can see how other cities have done it.
6
SPEAKER_04
And there s lots of good ideas.
6
SPEAKER_04
But honestly, Jay, it requires an orchestrated effort comprehensively.
6
SPEAKER_04
So many have been sort of half
6
SPEAKER_04
baked ideas or they re not comprehensive enough and they get people really excited about it and sponsorship money is spent and then not much happens.
6
SPEAKER_04
So inconveniently, unless it s comprehensive, a four or five year effort staffed by people who know what they re doing with enough intensity, it s probably not going to work.
6
SPEAKER_05
Yeah, it s good to have that clarity.
6
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I think a lot of people would want to see this change.
6
SPEAKER_05
I can imagine, you know, wanting to back this change.
6
SPEAKER_05
And I m sure a lot of those people are already doing it in their own lives, but they d love to see it extended out to others.
6
SPEAKER_04
I do have one suggestion that most cities can consider.
6
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There s something called a complete streets policy bundle.
6
SPEAKER_04
Every street is redone on average every seven years and that provides an opportunity to make that street constructed not just for cars as most streets and roadways in America are but for humans too.
6
SPEAKER_04
So in other words they have to be considered for narrower lanes which calms traffic, for bike lanes, for wider sidewalks, for trees, for safe crosswalks.
6
SPEAKER_04
And if a city council that adopts complete streets, it creates an onus for them to make a more walkable, livable community.
6
SPEAKER_04
And any city in America can do that.
6
SPEAKER_04
And there s, by the way, there s great examples.
6
SPEAKER_04
Santa Barbara, California has done a fantastic job.
6
SPEAKER_04
Boulder, Colorado, fantastic job.
6
SPEAKER_04
Madison, Wisconsin.
6
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These are places that are not only walkable, but they re economically thriving and people report the highest levels of well-being.
6
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They have some of the lowest rates of obesity in America.
6
SPEAKER_04
So that s a great place to start for most American cities.
6
SPEAKER_05
I want to make sure everyone knows when you get the book you re going to hear about sleeps, naps, fasting, sunlight.
6
SPEAKER_05
I mean there are so many other topics that I don t want to go over here because I want you to go and read the book and dive into the depth of just you know how much research, how much thought, how much
6
SPEAKER_05
Work has gone into this over the last couple of decades from Dan and his team.
6
SPEAKER_05
But Dan, I have to ask you about purpose.
6
SPEAKER_05
We re on purpose and you talk about purpose in the book.
6
SPEAKER_05
I remember speaking to you about it last time as being such a key attribute of a successful centenarian was purpose.
6
SPEAKER_05
How did they define or view purpose or contributing to the greater good?
6
SPEAKER_05
What does that look like for someone in a blue zone?
6
SPEAKER_04
Well, I have a few things to say about purpose.
6
SPEAKER_04
So it begins in blue zones with vocabulary for purpose.
6
SPEAKER_04
In Costa Rica, it s plan de vida.
6
SPEAKER_04
In Okinawa, it s ikigai.
6
SPEAKER_04
So it s imbued in their culture.
6
SPEAKER_04
But it s manifested, purpose in Blue Zones is rarely an individual pursuit.
6
SPEAKER_04
It s like my purpose is stamp collecting or something or butterflies.
6
SPEAKER_04
It always has a social component or a philanthropic giving back to the community, supporting the family, supporting my group component to it, a service component to it.
6
SPEAKER_04
And, you know, I do a lot of thinking about it.
6
SPEAKER_04
In our Blue Zone work, we have this purpose workshop.
6
SPEAKER_04
And you d be shocked at how many Americans wake up every morning tired.
6
SPEAKER_04
They pull the breakfast together for their kids, get them off to school, rush to work, work eight to nine hours, muscle through traffic back home.
6
SPEAKER_04
get dinner back together, and the stress just never goes away.
6
SPEAKER_04
Only about 30% of Americans have purpose in their work.
6
SPEAKER_04
That s according to a Gallup poll that surveyed about 2 million Americans.
6
SPEAKER_04
I think purpose is the intersection between having clarity on what your values are, knowing what you love to do,
6
SPEAKER_04
knowing what you re good at, and then studying those three lists for an outlet for them.
6
SPEAKER_04
That s true purpose, I think.
6
SPEAKER_04
That s available to all of us.
6
SPEAKER_04
But the founding director of the National Institutes on Aging, Dr. Robert Butler, found that people who could articulate their sense of purpose over time were living about eight years longer than people who are rudderless.
6
SPEAKER_04
So there s a real health benefit, but more so than a health benefit, it s just an enjoyable, rich way to live your life.
6
SPEAKER_04
And anything you can do to get more purpose in your life, including, I might add, listening to this podcast twice a week, every week of your life, is time well spent.
6
SPEAKER_05
Dan, thank you so much.
6
SPEAKER_05
The book is called The Blue Zone, Secrets for Living Longer, Lessons from the Healthiest Places on Earth.
6
SPEAKER_05
Dan Buettner, this is the book.
6
SPEAKER_05
Make sure you go grab a copy.
6
SPEAKER_05
Like I said, we didn t even scratch the surface.
6
SPEAKER_05
There are so many things I could talk to Dan about, but I want you to go grab the book.
6
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I want you to read it.
6
SPEAKER_05
I want you to study it.
6
SPEAKER_05
I want you to see these beautiful summary pages that are absolutely fantastic.
6
SPEAKER_05
They talk about the key learnings from each of the blue zones that Dan s been to and studied because it makes it really easy to just pick it up, reflect, have a discussion about it.
6
SPEAKER_05
I hope that you re going to reach out to a group of people that should listen to this podcast that are going to be part of that tribe, part of that squad, part of that social circle for you all, whether it s a book club, whether it s a pickleball team, whatever it may be.
6
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I really hope that that social part is not underestimated and undervalued.
6
SPEAKER_05
And Dana, thank you again for coming all the way.
6
SPEAKER_05
You just flew in an hour before this, literally landed, came from the airport, stepped in the sea.
6
SPEAKER_05
gave a beautiful interview with all your energy, passion and it s truly remarkable and I m really grateful for your work.
6
SPEAKER_05
So thank you so much.
6
SPEAKER_04
It s been an honor and a pleasure, Jay.
6
SPEAKER_04
Thank you.
6
SPEAKER_05
Thank you.
6
SPEAKER_05
Always been a fan and continue to be.
6
SPEAKER_04
We ll see you when you re 100.
6
SPEAKER_04
Yes.
6
SPEAKER_05
Thank you.
6
SPEAKER_05
If you love this episode, you ll love my interview with Dr. Gabor Mate on understanding your trauma and how to heal emotional wounds to start moving on from the past.
6
SPEAKER_01
Everything in nature grows only where it s vulnerable.
6
SPEAKER_01
So a tree doesn t grow where it s hard and thick, does it?
6
SPEAKER_01
It grows where it s soft and green and vulnerable.
6
SPEAKER_03
Something that makes me crazy is when people say, well, I had this career before, but it was a waste.
6
SPEAKER_03
And that s where the perspective shift comes, that it s not a waste, that everything you ve done has built you to where you are now.
6
SPEAKER_03
This is She Pivots, the podcast where we explore the inspiring pivots women have made and dig deeper into the personal reasons behind them.
6
SPEAKER_03
Join me, Emily Tisch Sussman, every Wednesday on She Pivots.
6
SPEAKER_03
Listen to She Pivots on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
6
SPEAKER_02
Tune in to the new podcast, Stories from the Village of Nothing Much.
6
SPEAKER_02
Like, easy listening, but for fiction.
6
SPEAKER_02
If you ve overdosed on bad news, we invite you into a world where the glimmers of goodness in everyday life are all around you.
6
SPEAKER_02
I m Katharine Nicolai, and I m an architect of cozy.
6
SPEAKER_02
Come spend some time where everyone is welcome and the default is kindness.
6
SPEAKER_02
Listen, relax, enjoy.
6
SPEAKER_02
Listen to stories from the Village of Nothing Much on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
6
SPEAKER_00
The Black Effect presents Family Therapy, and I m your host, Elliot Connick.
6
SPEAKER_00
Jay is the woman in this dynamic who is currently co-parenting two young boys with her former partner, David.
6
SPEAKER_02
David, he is a leader.
6
SPEAKER_02
He just don t want to leave me.
6
SPEAKER_00
But how do you lead a woman?
6
SPEAKER_00
How do you lead in a relationship?
6
SPEAKER_00
Like, what s the blueprint?
6
SPEAKER_00
David, you just have
7
SPEAKER_00
That s the most important question.
7
SPEAKER_00
Listen to Family Therapy on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.