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You're listening
0:02
to the human upgrade with Dave Asbury. You're
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listening to the human upgrade with with
0:08
Dave Asbury. Guys,
0:11
this is Dan the
0:13
blue Zones Dave has written
0:15
a really influential book by going
0:18
around and saying, well, where are their pockets of long
0:20
lived people? And what do they do? What
0:22
can we learn from that? And I
0:24
just thought it was really cool approach. So
0:27
It's about time. We have a conversation. So
0:29
thank you. Thank you. Thank you for coming on the
0:31
show.
0:32
I'm delighted. So if I could just put
0:34
a finer point on the on the introduction,
0:36
you know what I mean? People I
0:38
I write for National Geographic. It's one of
0:40
the hats I wear. But for
0:43
the for the Blue Zones it wasn't so
0:45
much about me. I I led
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a very big team of people.
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I
1:59
write the
1:59
National Geographic. It's one of the hats
2:02
I wear. But for the
2:04
for the Blue project, it wasn't so much
2:06
about me. I I led a
2:08
very big team of people. The
2:10
first team of of experts
2:13
we use were demographers and
2:15
we literally parse through worldwide census
2:18
data to identify demographically
2:21
confirmed areas where people are living
2:24
measurably longer. So it wasn't just
2:26
sort of the hearsay of VELCABOMBA
2:28
Valley or hunt of hunt of
2:30
Valley of Pakistan. These were these
2:32
were real places that we before
2:35
we even began
2:37
to guess at what these people are
2:39
doing, we had confirmed their ages
2:41
of with a pre expedition. We
2:44
found five of these blue Zones. And
2:47
then I brought another wave of experts.
2:49
They're mostly epidemiologists anthropologists,
2:52
medical researchers. And the
2:54
theory was because
2:56
only about twenty percent of how long
2:58
we live as a population in
3:01
the developed world is dictated by genes.
3:03
The other eighty percent is something else.
3:05
Based on that assumption, then we went
3:07
to all five of these areas that I've been doing it
3:10
now for twenty years to find the common
3:12
denominators or the correlates, the
3:14
things that seem to be happening
3:16
in all five blue zones And
3:19
from that, distill some insights on how
3:21
we might be able to live longer.
3:23
And the value proposition I have,
3:25
Dave, is not that I don't pretend
3:27
people can live to a hundred and twenty. I
3:30
think we're ways from that. Theoretically,
3:32
I think we can't but the average
3:35
maximum life expectancy of
3:37
the human species at the current
3:39
level of science
3:40
in the developed world is
3:42
about ninety five.
3:45
What average max mean?
3:47
Like, what does that mean for ninety five? That
3:49
means if we did everything right,
3:53
and you're an average person, we
3:56
should be able to make it to ninety five. The average
3:58
person could make it to ninety five.
3:59
Okay. Well, but remember you have
4:02
you have outliers in one extreme
4:04
or who, you know, will run marathons and
4:06
take
4:06
all the right vitamins and be dead
4:08
at fifty by some weird cancer. And
4:10
then you have people who can drink
4:12
a fifth of liquor and smoke cigarettes and
4:14
they make it to hundred. And but
4:16
those are, you know, tiny fraction. But
4:19
most of us within two standard deviations
4:21
of the mean, the capacity
4:23
of our human machine
4:25
right now
4:27
is ninety five. The
4:30
potential, you know, and I know your work
4:34
pushes those boundaries. And theoretically,
4:36
I think it's possible, but we're not seeing
4:38
it yet.
4:40
I absolutely hear
4:43
what you're saying.
4:44
the
4:45
Yeah. Today, if you just kinda do
4:48
some of the stuff and you live in average life,
4:50
yeah, that's there. And I
4:52
have zero evidence that
4:55
a hundred and eighty, which is my, you know, my
4:57
minimum acceptable goal, is
5:00
the right number. All I did is
5:02
I looked at you know, when I look at our
5:04
outliers, We've got
5:06
probably a hundred and twenty as
5:09
is the oldest living human. And by the way, is
5:11
that a real number? Do you believe that one?
5:13
Yeah. Marie Camet,
5:15
yes, I do. I know there's some controversy
5:18
that she may have been assuming her daughter's
5:20
identity. she made it to a hundred and twenty
5:22
two and five months and marked the,
5:24
you know, outer limit. But, you know, you
5:27
you look at the number of supercentinaries, the
5:29
people who make a hundred and
5:31
tenor, it's not growing as a
5:33
proportion of the population. So
5:35
we, you know, we fall off -- Yeah. --
5:38
we fall off -- We're It's
5:40
somewhere around one ten or or one twenty.
5:42
And all I did is I said, I wanna do fifty percent
5:45
better than our best outlier Dave.
5:47
and use a whole bunch of technology in every
5:49
other learning that we have and see
5:51
what happens. And, you know, there's a
5:53
great chance that all die trying but I'm
5:55
gonna have fun doing it and hopefully learn a few things.
5:58
Right? There there's I didn't see a lot of downside
5:59
for that kind of a goal. And
6:02
there
6:02
isn't. And by the way, you can make it.
6:04
And if you look at, you know, life expectancy
6:07
for American men,
6:08
nineteen hundred was forty. You
6:11
know, we're now up to about seventy five, which
6:13
is almost a doubling. So, you know,
6:15
if we double it again, your hundred and eighty
6:17
is definitely within reach. But
6:19
it's probably by
6:22
technology or intervention.
6:23
We don't we we we
6:25
may be
6:27
merging towards it, but we don't know what it
6:29
is yet. You know, the the big the
6:31
big reason we're living so much longer now
6:34
is because of penicillin and
6:36
vaccines. you know, that created the
6:38
biggest because what used to kill us,
6:40
you know, in the before about nineteen thirty
6:43
was infectious disease. you
6:45
step on a nail and you'd be dead in
6:47
two weeks. Most people
6:49
died in World War Zones of infection,
6:52
not a bullet wounds. And, you
6:54
know, and Penicillin came along and all of
6:56
a sudden, boom, we had a way to deal with a lot of
6:58
the infectious diseases and then antibiotics.
7:01
you could foreseen that somebody would
7:03
Discovering orange mold in the connection between
7:06
that and increasing our
7:08
immunity. Likewise, you
7:10
know, there'll probably be some genetic
7:12
intervention, you know, some CRISPR
7:16
overture, which may
7:18
add that, but my work Dave mostly
7:20
focuses on, alright, here's,
7:23
these are real people living right
7:25
now who are living about ten
7:27
years longer than we are, biologically
7:31
younger at every decade, probably a decade
7:33
younger by a lot than their coronavirus and
7:37
they're suffering a fifth
7:39
Dave of heart disease, a tenth
7:41
Dave of diabetes, Zones in
7:43
one case about a tenth of what rate
7:46
of dementia. So I'm saying, okay, here
7:48
are these real people what
7:50
are they doing to achieve healthy ninety
7:53
five, occasionally a hundred?
7:55
And then, you know, if the intervention comes
7:57
along in our lifetime, you'll be
7:59
ready for it. You know, your body because the
8:01
first interventions will probably just slow
8:03
aging, not reverse it.
8:05
So you wanna be in this best shape you can
8:08
right now. And
8:09
that's kind of a a Ray Kurzweil approach.
8:12
What, you know, Ray's perspective is that, you know, singularities
8:15
here, you just have to last long enough. And, you know,
8:17
there's a bunch of people on that kind
8:19
of a train. You know, you're gonna upload yourself to the Internet
8:21
and live forever that way. And do
8:23
you think that's a kind of life extension? Are
8:25
you into that?
8:27
Not really. Gonna
8:28
freeze your head when you die? I
8:31
think I'll do that, actually. You are.
8:33
Are you on the list? Is that like a necklace for
8:35
the headfreezers? I
8:36
haven't noticed, but I just this
8:38
is a necklace for a coin iPhone in Jerusalem.
8:42
Oh, cool. But
8:45
it's Well,
8:47
we I mean, I think the best chance
8:50
that, you know, you can be reincarnated
8:53
as to to freeze yourself, much better chance
8:55
than I think, you know, cremation
8:57
or, you know, having the worms take you
8:59
over. So that's kind of a fun way to do.
9:01
I have several friends who are doing that right
9:03
now. III feel like I'm far
9:06
away enough far enough
9:08
away from death that I haven't really started making
9:10
arrangements yet, but who knows?
9:12
That is so interesting. It's
9:14
it's a rare treat to be able to talk with another
9:17
radical long term life thinker
9:20
and to be able to go deep on stuff like that.
9:22
You know, I I wrote a cover story for National
9:24
Geographic also on happiness. and a book
9:27
called the Blue Zones of happiness where I
9:29
took a data based approach to
9:31
what
9:31
drives happiness and most of what brings
9:33
true happiness what
9:35
people think bring true happiness is misguided
9:38
or just plain wrong. But one of the
9:40
happy coincidences of
9:42
the blue zones, longest of women
9:44
are in Okinawa, longest of men are
9:46
in the highlands of Sardinia,
9:48
the island of Ikaria, Greece,
9:50
off the coast of Turkey, the Nacoya
9:52
Peninsula, Costa Rica, and among the
9:54
seven day Adventists, those places are
9:57
in the top quintile, the happiest places.
9:59
So
9:59
unlike sort of, you know,
10:01
these Silicon Valley billionaires who
10:03
are, you know, super busy and
10:06
spending all their money on these heroic
10:08
interventions in metformin and
10:10
and testosterone and none
10:12
of which by the way have proven to
10:14
stop slower reverse aging and there's some
10:17
controversy The
10:19
methods that or the insights that have harvested
10:21
from Blue Zones are not only getting these people
10:24
an extra ten years, but
10:26
they're also happy. And
10:28
so, you know, in the same way that you're
10:31
taking this sort of hundred
10:33
and eighty year approach to
10:36
or after life approach that
10:38
also makes you happier right
10:40
now. It's we
10:42
share that that, I guess, parallel
10:45
philosophy. Howard Bauchner:
10:47
We do. And happiness
10:49
matters so much that
10:52
most people, if you were to say, do you
10:54
want ninety happy years or a hundred
10:56
shitty years? They're going to
10:58
say, I want ninety happy years. So
11:01
it it's it's almost the opposite
11:03
of the Amazon selling strategy. It's
11:06
about quality over quantity.
11:08
But if you can get both, you'd like both. but
11:10
buying a whole bunch of cheap crap doesn't
11:12
actually it's not very good strategy for the environment
11:15
or for your house or for anything else. And that's
11:17
why I think there's a rebellion against cheap plastic
11:19
disposable crap. You don't want a cheap plastic
11:21
disposable life either. And
11:25
so I I love it that you're studying what they're
11:27
doing.
11:28
With the other go
11:30
ahead.
11:31
Well, I'm just seeing that longevity and
11:33
happiness right now are so interlaced. You
11:35
can't pull the two apart grow. The same things
11:38
that are driving longevity also
11:40
drive happiness, getting enough sleep,
11:42
having a sense of purpose, being socially
11:45
connected, in having
11:47
low stress. These things, they
11:50
go hand in hand. In fact, we know
11:53
that if you can manage your life
11:55
to be in the top quintile of the highest
11:57
levels of subjective well-being or
11:59
life satisfaction,
11:59
it's worth about
12:02
six years of life expectancy over
12:04
being in that
12:05
the bottom six. So Zones
12:07
of the best longevity tolerance
12:10
is happiness. And there are lots
12:12
of things we know that you can do
12:14
that stack your your deck in favor
12:16
of happiness. In
12:19
fact, Zones of the
12:21
the best definitions of hell you
12:23
could have is to say
12:26
an unhappy, very long life.
12:28
Right? Like, why why would
12:30
you want that? So you you make
12:32
a great point about happiness.
12:35
the
12:36
Dave you ever done work with Dean Ornish,
12:38
like, the the super low fat guy?
12:41
He's
12:41
a he's good friend of mine.
12:44
So so when when he did his
12:46
original work, he'd said, well, guys, we're gonna
12:48
do lifestyle and meditation interventions
12:51
and a diet. Right?
12:53
But then he
12:55
talks about the diet as
12:58
as having caused the changes even though
13:00
it looks like lifestyle meditation in other
13:02
studies had Dave changes he was describing
13:04
to the diet. Like, he he had the
13:06
the mix of those two so intermingled that
13:08
statistically it was hard to prove that
13:11
eating, you know, a very high starch, high
13:13
sugar, low fat diet was
13:17
positive for that. in your happiness
13:20
books or happiness research,
13:23
how do you break apart the
13:25
value of community, strong
13:27
social structure, getting enough
13:29
sleep from all
13:31
the other variables like the sunshine angle,
13:34
the sun minerals in the water. I mean, it could be
13:36
anything. that's a conundrum for
13:38
all kinds of aging research. Howard Bauchner:
13:40
You know, you look for correlations. The
13:43
way that happiness research, which
13:45
is done worldwide, largely
13:47
by Gal, but also the Latino barometer
13:49
and the Euro barometer, they ask
13:52
people to imagine themselves on
13:55
a scale of one to ten with ten being their
13:57
best of life and one being
13:59
their worst.
14:00
And then they ask them seventy five other
14:03
questions about how often they
14:05
socialize in the level of their health, their
14:07
BMI, their religion, their
14:09
income level, their sex, their age, etcetera,
14:11
etcetera. and then through regression
14:13
analysis, which I'm sure you're familiar with.
14:15
You can find out exactly what
14:18
things most strongly correlate
14:20
with people reporting a very
14:22
high level of happiness. And when you do that
14:24
at a worldwide level, you get
14:26
a pretty strong correlation. And
14:29
I don't try to draw positive relationship
14:31
between these two, I like to
14:34
phrase it in in stacking
14:36
the deck.
14:37
So that's something that's very highly
14:40
correlated with high life satisfaction.
14:42
If you do it, there's no downside to
14:45
it, but it it
14:47
stacks it puts more aces in your
14:50
your life's blackjack deck in that,
14:52
you know, you too will will
14:55
You know, and and some of those things we know that
14:57
work are having five good
14:59
friends you can count on on a bad day.
15:02
you know, your the quality of your social
15:05
interactions and connections, the number one
15:08
driver by a margin. of how
15:10
happy you are. So when you say to yourself,
15:12
well, I wanna be happy. Should
15:15
I go on beat read a bunch of
15:17
positive psychology class books?
15:20
Or should I take a Tony
15:22
Robbins class? Or should I work
15:24
my ass off and make another hundred thousand
15:26
dollars this your knowing
15:29
that none of those will significantly add
15:31
your long term happiness still
15:33
starts to drive you towards maybe
15:36
things that do, like, you know,
15:38
being generous and
15:39
remembering your friend's birthday
15:41
and really nurturing
15:42
friendships. I mean, that that's the
15:44
stuff that really works. and it's you there's
15:46
not I can't sell you anything. You know,
15:49
and and marketers don't necessarily
15:51
seize that because there's not not a lot of money
15:54
in it. But we know, statistically
15:56
speaking, it's one of the strongest things you can
15:58
do.
16:00
Right. Just having those having those
16:02
connections. And
16:05
-- Yeah. -- it it's funny. When you're
16:07
looking at at kind of I
16:09
don't know if isolated pockets is the right word,
16:11
but but your in your research, you
16:14
came across intact
16:16
communities that that that
16:18
aren't had defined boundaries so
16:20
you could find where the suprasensinarians
16:23
are. like this, very popular
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because I get in trouble with the
16:27
we don't assert there are more supersentinarians
16:30
there. The -- Okay. -- the the what
16:33
we found areas that has the
16:35
lowest rate of middle aged mortality.
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Oh, I wanna stop you there because I get
18:47
trouble with the
18:48
we don't assert there are more supersentinarians
18:51
there. The -- Yeah. -- the the
18:53
what
18:54
we found areas that has the
18:56
lowest rate of middle aged mortality.
18:59
And otherwise, they're getting that age
19:01
of the age ninety five without chronic
19:03
disease. you know, a
19:06
fifth Dave of chronic disease that we suffer.
19:08
And necessarily, because more
19:10
people are hitting that ninety five, there's
19:14
also more people bleeding into their hundreds.
19:17
So I'm not saying
19:19
that these people have greater
19:21
physical capacity or greater genes
19:23
than us. They're living a longer time
19:26
because they're avoiding the diseases that
19:28
foreshorten our lives.
19:32
Now
19:33
some of the some
19:36
of the the reflect almost
19:38
everything that I've heard about you from
19:41
the research Dave done just over the years
19:43
has been that you're sort of targeting people
19:45
lived a long time. But so from the beginning,
19:48
the target was just to find,
19:50
like, a higher health standard in middle but
19:53
wasn't to find people who were living longer.
19:55
That's just kind of sensationalism from the press.
19:57
Well,
19:58
I mean, they they all places that live, movies
20:01
play people live ten years longer,
20:03
but
20:03
it's not in obsession with centinarians. And
20:06
some That was not a target. That
20:09
wasn't the target. But, you know, not
20:11
coincidentally, in Okinawa,
20:14
you have a population of
20:17
the it's especially the women, not the men
20:19
in Okinawa, but you've for
20:21
women over sixty, that cohort,
20:24
you'll find about thirty
20:26
times more of them reach eight to one hundred
20:28
than a similar cohort in the United
20:30
States. And in Sardinia,
20:33
they have about ten times more
20:35
male centenarians per thousand
20:37
people, or per hundred thousand
20:40
then you would expect to see in a similar population
20:42
in the United States. But
20:45
that's just because they're not dying
20:47
younger, they're not prematurely dying
20:50
of heart disease, diabetes, certain
20:52
types of cancer and dementia. Howard
20:54
Bauchner:
20:54
Okay, that that makes a lot of sense.
20:58
For our listeners, what did you find?
21:00
Like like, what what are these people
21:02
doing to live longer? You don't think it's genetic
21:04
because you have multiple pockets around the world.
21:07
So is it, like, fifty percent high,
21:09
fifty percent happiness? Is
21:11
it, you know, seventy thirty? Like,
21:13
like, what what's the secret formula?
21:16
Well, I'll talk about diet
21:18
in a minute. And
21:20
have this new book, The Blue Zone American
21:22
Kitchen, which I'd like to talk about but Oh, yeah.
21:24
It looks like I've got a should grab my copy. It's right
21:27
over there. I unpacked it. I found it. Yeah.
21:30
Yeah. So
21:31
so
21:32
Okay. Bottom line,
21:36
in none of these blue Zones, do people
21:38
try to live a long time? None of them are
21:40
pursuing diets there's
21:42
not gyms, there's not exercise
21:45
programs, they're not calling eight hundred numbers
21:47
to buy supplements. They
21:49
just live their lives. But
21:52
the big insight is they
21:54
don't pursue health and longevity,
21:56
but rather it insulates
21:59
they their
21:59
micro decisions on
22:02
a day to day hour to hour basis
22:04
are marginally Buettner. So
22:07
they're nudged into moving every
22:09
twenty minutes or so because they live in environments
22:12
where every time they go to work or a friend's
22:14
house, or out to eat at the cajun's
22:16
a walk. They have gardens
22:18
out back. Like, I know you do. You know, I was
22:20
watching your great kale ornament today.
22:26
They have their houses aren't
22:28
full of mechanical conveniences. So
22:30
they're still doing house work by
22:32
hand and kitchen work by hand and yard
22:35
work by hand. The
22:37
option to be lonely isn't
22:39
there because if if you're not showing
22:41
up to church or the
22:43
local party somebody's pounding on your
22:45
door, the cheapest most
22:49
accessible and most socially accepted
22:52
food over time. And by the way,
22:54
the most delicious has been whole food
22:56
plant based. out
22:58
to unpack the diet a little bit more,
23:01
but that's mostly what we've been eating. And
23:03
purpose comes with mother's milk.
23:06
There's vocabulary for purpose,
23:08
so you were talking about the corrosive nature
23:11
of stress. For a lot of
23:13
Americans, it wakes up it comes
23:15
from waking up every morning and, you
23:17
know, not knowing what you're gonna do with your life
23:19
or if there's somebody gonna take care of you.
23:21
This is an initial in Blue Zones because you
23:23
have a strong sense of purpose and you're surrounded
23:26
by a family that's gonna take care of
23:28
you till your hundred and five. And
23:30
and and then and so, you
23:32
know, these are the things that I assert
23:34
we can learn from, and we ought to be paying
23:36
attention to not
23:38
only if, you know, you Dave a family
23:41
and you want your family to thrive, but
23:43
also if you're a government and
23:45
you're interested in lowering healthcare
23:47
costs and raising the general well-being of
23:50
the people who voted you into office.
23:52
Howard Bauchner:
23:53
And as I mentioned, before
23:56
we started rolling, I just
23:58
moved off SendGrid in sales for, like, six
24:00
So my laptop send is
24:03
a cardboard box. My backdrop is
24:05
a white wall, but I do
24:07
have your book. Oh, thank you.
24:10
The blue American kitchen. which
24:12
is cool. And it just does a fill a author.
24:15
Congrats. It's it
24:17
it's always like giving birth to have
24:19
a new to write a new book. There's just so much
24:22
that goes into it, which is really
24:24
cool. So hundred
24:26
recipes to live to a hundred. So
24:28
tell me your dietary philosophy. You mentioned
24:30
Whole Foods Fun Based. I'm I'm gonna want you to
24:32
define that a little bit more. Yeah. And then I'll
24:34
connect it to the book you're holding there. So
24:37
you know, as part
24:38
of a national geographic
24:40
project, we did a meta analysis.
24:42
So if you not want to know what a centenary
24:45
and to live to be hundred, you can't just
24:47
say, what have you been eating? Because
24:50
they they don't know. They didn't remember.
24:52
You know, if I asked you what you ate a week
24:54
ago, Tuesday, for lunch, you might
24:56
not be able to tell me. In order
24:58
to ascertain that, we found a
25:01
hundred and fifty five dietary surveys
25:04
done in all five blue zones over
25:06
the past eighty five years. And
25:08
then we did a meta analysis or sort
25:10
of a worldwide averaging. So
25:12
if you look at their traditional diets,
25:14
they're eating mostly whole
25:16
food plant based, about sixty five
25:19
percent complex carbohydrates,
25:21
not simple carbohydrates. And
25:24
the five pillars of every blue zone diet
25:26
are whole grains, greens,
25:29
tubers like sweet potatoes, nuts,
25:32
and then beans. And if you're eating a
25:35
cup of beans a day that's associated with
25:37
about four extra years of life suspectancy.
25:40
They did eat meat, but
25:42
only about five times per month
25:44
on average.
25:45
So my philosophy begins
25:48
and stops with, alright, here
25:51
here are the manifestly longest of
25:53
people. Here's the way they've been eating
25:56
this might be something you want to pay attention
25:58
to. And
25:59
I don't get
25:59
involved with sort of the micronutrients or
26:03
or trying to deconstruct the
26:07
nutrients in each of those general
26:09
food categories. But
26:11
I do over twenty
26:13
years of seeing these people and
26:16
eating with them. I I'm of the strong
26:18
opinion that that's correct that's
26:20
directionally correct as a way
26:22
to eat.
26:23
I I ended up writing my
26:25
big diet book, like, a dozen
26:28
years ago. And
26:30
I found out that legumes
26:33
of beans were
26:36
positive and so were night shaped as
26:38
So were positive problems for me,
26:41
and I wrote about lectins. And
26:43
then later, Dr. Gundry, who
26:45
you've probably have of met because he
26:47
worked with in Loma Linda
26:49
with one of the blue Zones, but he
26:51
also came out like me saying, I think
26:53
beans even though the fibers good in them.
26:55
The anti nutrients are so strong
26:58
that they're causing the problems
27:01
in the population that you worked with.
27:03
And so I I'm genuinely scratching
27:05
my head going, alright, Dave. I
27:07
hear what you're saying. When I try and do it,
27:10
it destroys my quality of life.
27:12
What what could be going on there?
27:15
Well,
27:15
two things. You're an end of Zones.
27:18
And -- Yes. -- secondly, these
27:22
I I don't know if, you
27:23
know, if you cook beans and
27:25
then rinse them, you get rid of
27:27
the vast majority of lectins. if
27:29
you, you know, if you eat king of beans and crunch
27:32
them. So
27:34
so I I don't I don't necessarily buy
27:36
the lectin argument But
27:40
really, I'll just stop and end
27:42
with, if it is indisputable
27:45
that the longest of populations are
27:47
eating lots of beans
27:49
throughout their lives n
27:51
n n n and
27:53
producing much better health income outcomes
27:56
than we are America. I
27:58
cannot tell you if it's it's because
28:00
the beans for sure. I can't tell
28:02
you if if there's something
28:05
else in their diet that's explaining
28:07
their longevity. But I can tell you
28:09
a major feature of every diet
28:11
of longevity, including by the way, Loma Linda.
28:13
So I'm not sure You know,
28:15
if if Gundry looked at the Adventist Health
28:18
study, which followed Zones hundred and
28:20
three thousand Adventist for thirty
28:22
years, he would see a ton of beans in
28:24
their diet. So I'm not sure how he
28:26
he discerned
28:29
that, you know, beans were somehow bad
28:31
for people in Loma Linda.
28:33
But but, you know, III
28:36
don't like drawing a positive. I
28:38
can't say beans cause a long life,
28:40
but I can't say beyond a shadow
28:42
of a doubt, people are living
28:44
a long time, have eaten a lot
28:46
of beans throughout their lives.
28:48
What does the Whole Foods plant based
28:51
diet mean? Like,
28:53
like, how do I know if it's a Whole Foods?
28:55
because I know that I take the shell off my walnut.
28:58
for instance. So, like, that's already processed
29:00
to certain point. How do I know, like, do
29:02
we eat the the skin of that Amami, or do I just
29:04
eat the inside? Like, like, what does Whole
29:06
Foods mean the way you use it?
29:10
Well, it's a single ingredient food.
29:13
I I guess that's a good place to start. If
29:16
you read the label and there's only one ingredient,
29:19
I mean, there's nuances
29:21
there, but
29:23
it it grows and so
29:26
it's taken out of the ground or
29:28
it's plucked off a tree or a
29:30
plant
29:31
the But
29:33
it it avoids the it
29:37
doesn't have added sugar. I think it's
29:39
a really important component
29:42
to it. It doesn't have
29:44
ingredients you can't pronounce. It
29:47
doesn't have emulsifiers, or,
29:52
you
29:52
know, you
29:54
know, to your point, it's not
29:56
ground down too much. Like, if
29:58
you overgrind even
29:59
a whole wheat,
30:01
it's not as healthy
30:03
as if you grind less. your
30:05
smoothie is healthier if you don't overblend
30:08
it, and it's still a little bit chunky because
30:10
your glycemic lowness you
30:12
know, I took a lesson from the Sardinian
30:14
Blue I start my day every
30:17
day with a really really chunky Minestroni.
30:19
and it's very very
30:22
the
30:23
low glycemic. So it
30:26
absorbs
30:26
very slowly. your
30:28
your microbiome loves it because there's
30:30
about forty different species
30:33
of fiber in there. You know, you have
30:35
about a thousand species of bacteria
30:38
They like a variation of fiber, full
30:41
vitamins, full soluble soluble
30:43
fiber and the chunky stuff. So
30:46
I don't get a spike like I would if I started
30:48
my day with cereal. I don't get bogged
30:50
down like I would if I bake bacon
30:53
and eggs for breakfast. That's
30:55
how I start my day and it's all it's
30:57
all whole foods just happen to be
30:59
cooked together.
31:02
and it's delicious by the it
31:04
sounds delicious. I'm just thinking that
31:06
if I ate that, I would have
31:08
a food baby. I would
31:10
have arthritis for a week because
31:13
of the the nitrates, and I am nitrates
31:15
sensitive. About a few four hundred people
31:17
appear to be, like, twenty eight percent of rheumatoid
31:19
arthritis is caused by the Nightshade family.
31:23
And I do farting all the time.
31:25
the
31:27
And and I'm I'm sort of and I'd be radically
31:29
hungry after I that. Like, I I would just feel like
31:31
my body wants me to eat sugar right now
31:33
to help deal with the load that it's of the
31:35
inflammation it just got.
31:38
I I, you know, III
31:40
think the
31:41
pursuit of finding
31:42
what works for you and your considerable
31:44
contribution to that body work is very important.
31:47
So by no means
31:49
what I say, you know, eat
31:51
this way because it's worked for
31:54
satinarians around the world. It has to work for you.
31:57
But I will say when it comes to microbiome,
31:59
the you know,
32:00
usually the best way, you
32:02
know, if you're feeding your microbiome, the
32:05
hundred truing or so, bacteria
32:07
in your gut, meat, cheese, and eggs,
32:09
a certain type of bacteria balloons,
32:12
and it dominates. And then The next
32:14
day, if they've been eating rib eye every day, if they've been
32:16
fed rib eye every and then all of a sudden you get
32:18
a couple beans, yeah, you might
32:20
get farty. But, you know, the
32:22
way to train it is to start
32:25
with a teaspoon or tablespoon of beans
32:27
and day one and then two tablespoons
32:29
and then wake work your way up to a cup.
32:32
that's
32:34
You'll get less party that way. It doesn't
32:36
stop the joint issues for me, but it did stop
32:38
the party I mean, I I love refried
32:40
B and C team a lot when I was younger, but
32:43
I don't because of just kinda
32:45
dialing in the personal precision. So thank you
32:47
for sharing that. tidbit. You you
32:50
put something else in your book. I wanna compliment
32:52
you on. This is a page that says regional
32:54
and contemporary America. You actually, like,
32:56
drove through the country
32:58
run on a road trip, and you talk about Appalachian
33:01
food, coastal food, you know, Persian,
33:03
Japanese. It it it's it's
33:05
pretty cool that you're teasing out
33:08
what's happening in the real world
33:10
that's still based on eating real food that
33:12
single ingredient, which I I like
33:15
a lot about your approach there. It
33:17
it is a way more natural approach than,
33:19
you know, the pop tarts diet. But
33:22
I could just say, you know, the idea behind
33:24
that blue zone America kitchen. So,
33:28
well, from what I discern from the longest
33:30
of populations, I did come up with a dietary
33:33
pattern. And then I worked
33:35
with an NYU researcher to find
33:37
subcultures in America
33:39
that followed this same dietary
33:42
pattern, and we found it among
33:44
the African, Asian Latin,
33:46
and Native Americans living
33:48
around nineteen hundred nineteen twenty.
33:56
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You're listening to the human upgrade
34:58
with Dave Asbury. And
35:01
then I worked with an NYU
35:03
researcher to find subcultures
35:05
in America that followed
35:08
this same dietary pattern. And we found
35:10
it among the
35:11
African, Asian Latin,
35:13
and Native
35:13
Americans living around
35:16
nineteen hundred, nineteen twenty.
35:18
And then I found during the pandemic,
35:21
while other people were locking
35:23
down. It took a national geographic
35:25
photographer in
35:26
a van, and we went from Maine to
35:28
Miami
35:30
to Maui and then up to Minnesota. And
35:33
we found fifty Dave,
35:34
I would say heritage chefs
35:37
who Buettner are bringing
35:40
back this traditional way of eating. And it's
35:42
usually immigrants, by the way, fusing
35:44
the way they did things in the old country and
35:46
new country influences,
35:47
and then who could recreate these.
35:50
An important thing to remember, Dave, is
35:53
we evolved as a species
35:55
eat eating this kind of food.
35:57
So by the way, in in blue Zones, they're
35:59
not
35:59
vegan except for some Adventist. they
36:02
love meat. And by the way, if they if
36:04
they're given all the meat, they they want,
36:06
they'll eat it all the time. In fact, we're seeing this
36:08
in Sardinia. and not
36:10
coincidentally. And they're also eating lot
36:13
more processed food. And
36:14
almost every blue zone is disappearing as
36:17
their dietary pattern starts to
36:19
mimic you know, the standard American
36:21
diet.
36:22
So what what we I think we can both
36:24
agree on is a standard American diet.
36:26
The way we're eating right now is killing
36:28
us. probably, you know,
36:31
I wrote an essay in the front of that book, Blue
36:33
Zones American Kitchen, which will also appear
36:36
in January's issue of National Geographic.
36:39
But according to
36:41
the CDC, about six
36:43
hundred and eighty thousand Americans will
36:45
die this year
36:46
prematurely because
36:48
of the way we eat. And
36:50
it doesn't have to be like that. You know
36:52
the way more people
36:54
had
36:54
died eating the standard American diet
36:57
than have died in
36:58
World War one, World War
37:00
two, the
37:01
Korean War and Vietnam War combined. yeah,
37:04
we don't spend nearly as
37:06
much effort and time
37:08
trying to fix that as we do, you
37:10
know, with the Veterans Commission. And of course, people
37:13
give their life for our country, they need to
37:15
be recognized. I'm just saying is, you know,
37:17
we ought to be focusing on this other
37:19
big problem, killing more of us.
37:22
completely agree. I mean, look at our
37:24
reaction over the last couple of years to
37:26
something that is a tiny drop in the
37:28
bucket compared to what's happening every year
37:31
from preventable problems
37:33
driven by nutrition. Some
37:35
stuff has come out around from
37:38
Oxford saying that in the US,
37:42
you can predict that there's going to be extreme
37:44
longevity when there's an absence
37:46
of vital registration? In
37:48
other words, if they didn't have birth certificates,
37:51
there's magically a lot more older people.
37:53
Yes. I know that. Yeah. I'm sure you've
37:55
come across the research. I'm gonna explain it just a little
37:57
bit for listeners. And then just, like, tell me what's going
37:59
on with this because I think you're a smart guy. I think you're
38:01
heart smart. I think you're doing the right thing.
38:04
And it looks like from this this paper, there's
38:06
a couple others. They're saying poverty,
38:08
old age poverty, material deprivation,
38:11
low income, high crime, remote
38:13
region of birth, worse
38:15
health in the general population, and
38:18
fewer and other things like
38:20
that predicted remarkable longevity.
38:23
You're saying you're not looking at remarkable longevity,
38:26
but what these guys are finding is that
38:28
the areas, a lot of areas that you've looked
38:30
at, they have weird distributions of
38:32
people where it looks like some people might have faked their
38:34
birth certificates to avoid inheritance taxes.
38:37
So you must have thought about this. You must have
38:39
read the papers. Tell me your take on all this.
38:42
Yeah.
38:42
No, you're absolutely right.
38:45
We have when there's not birth certificates,
38:47
there's always age, exaggeration. With
38:50
you know, I write for National Geographic
38:52
where the fact checkers occupy
38:54
the corner office. And we before
38:56
we even published one word, we spent
38:59
three years in every one of
39:01
the blue zones checking birth certificates.
39:04
So there is a birth certificate and
39:06
not only checking the birth certificates, in
39:09
many cases verifying it by looking
39:11
at the baptismal record, And
39:13
a demographer named Michelle Kuwon
39:15
did that work. So we have a very
39:18
firm base on on
39:20
all blue zones they're
39:22
very good birth records. In fact, better
39:25
birth records in Costa Rica for example
39:27
than in the United States. We're all
39:30
Dave it very easy in Costa When
39:32
you're born, you're given a sequential number.
39:35
So it's kind of impossible to
39:38
you know, lie about your age because
39:40
you're born, you're given this this, you know,
39:43
an ID number that is
39:45
the the
39:46
guy was born five minutes before you
39:48
gets lower number, and the guy
39:50
born five minutes after you gets a higher number.
39:52
So you can't all of a sudden say,
39:54
What was so what was the other what
39:57
was the other
39:58
problem or
40:00
whatever? No. No. No. No.
40:02
Okay. Right. Right. Poverty. So
40:04
-- Right. --
40:07
two things. First of all, in every one
40:09
of the blue zones, they're kind of
40:11
they're deteriorating. The way people
40:14
are living today was not the way they were
40:16
living in the year
40:18
two thousand even or even two thousand ten,
40:20
And my work was mostly
40:23
the
40:24
synthesizing studies
40:26
that have been done in these blue zones up
40:28
to about the year two thousand. because
40:30
then things changed. And
40:33
or if you look at Okinawa of today,
40:35
Okinawa in the year two thousand
40:37
had the longest of population in
40:39
the history of the world. That was recorded in the World
40:42
Health Organization, published paper.
40:44
In two thousand twenty,
40:47
They
40:47
have the highest rates of obesity and
40:50
diabetes and actually the lowest
40:52
health of any prefecture in
40:54
Japan. So if a demographer
40:56
or if one of these people writing the paper goes to
40:58
Okanawa Dave and looks at
41:01
them,
41:01
of course, they they're gonna draw
41:03
What the hell? These blue zones are bunch of BS.
41:06
But we're we've captured a
41:08
population that live longer than any other
41:10
human, and then capture what was done
41:12
in human lifetime in
41:15
those populations. So that's where
41:17
most of my work has done. In Sardinia and
41:20
Costa Rica, the blue zones persist as
41:22
they do
41:22
among the seventh day Adventists.
41:23
So so you're saying that you
41:26
you did adequate work to
41:29
to validate the birth certificates of the people
41:31
you were you were looking at. And
41:33
just having known your work
41:36
from afar and your reputation amongst
41:38
people who know you personally because the number
41:40
of people who are doing longevity work is not that
41:42
large. Like, real hard core longevity
41:44
work. You have a stellar reputation.
41:47
Your motivations are are exactly
41:49
in the right place. And
41:52
I I greatly respect that.
41:55
And so I I'm I'm willing
41:57
to believe you where where you say, okay, and we validated
41:59
this to the
42:01
to the extent possible.
42:03
And, like, there's a whole bunch of people who've gone back
42:05
and all this. And there's actually a whole group of
42:08
Yeah. tribe that behaves
42:10
kinda like the the people who do editing
42:12
on Wikipedia. Like like, it it's a group of, like,
42:15
kind of insular kind of arguing to see
42:17
who's right, sort of things, who will go
42:19
in and try and validate stuff like that.
42:21
So you went down the path with your populations
42:23
and you came up with these results and
42:26
I'm mystified because I didn't come up with these
42:28
results when I look at it mechanistically
42:31
the But
42:32
I I'm still intrigued by by your work
42:34
and your perspective on it. So thanks for answering
42:36
the question. How long are you
42:38
gonna live?
42:39
Well, you know, if you look at
42:41
the trends that life expectancy since
42:44
about eighteen forty is going up two years
42:46
per
42:47
per decade,
42:49
And I think I do all the right things. You
42:51
know, I get enough physical activity. I'm
42:53
socially active. I don't have a lot of stress
42:55
in my life. I don't smoke.
42:58
You know, I believe a whole food plant based
43:00
diet with very little animal products
43:02
is is the way to go. I eat
43:04
that way. So,
43:06
you know, if you look at the if you look at
43:08
the life tables for me, my life
43:09
expectancy should be about ninety
43:12
two, but
43:13
I'm I'm in my sixties right
43:15
now. And if I get that extra two years
43:17
per decade that we see historically,
43:19
I should hit a hundred. And
43:21
yeah. And, you
43:23
know, I may be around for one
43:25
you know, some heroic
43:27
intervention that
43:29
you're closer to that I am,
43:31
that may just come along and, you know,
43:34
extend my life another you
43:36
know, I don't know,
43:37
a hundred years.
43:39
Do you run, like, anti
43:41
aging or age measurement
43:43
lab tests do you know your true age?
43:46
Have you had stem cells?
43:48
Any of the
43:50
the No. I don't think I
43:52
think there's more danger in those things
43:54
than there are --
43:55
Absolutely. -- actually. I
43:56
especially stem cells, Mike
43:59
Roysen just wrote a great book called
44:03
Upgrade Age Reboot. And
44:05
I he's a respected Cleveland Clinic
44:07
And
44:07
he wrote Upgrade
44:11
book about those interventions and really
44:13
outlines the dangers of them, you know,
44:15
as well as the promise. So there's
44:17
a there's some danger with those
44:20
the interventions.
44:21
It's really interesting
44:23
because some of the things Some
44:26
of the things that are
44:29
strongest in favor of a very
44:31
low meat diet comes
44:34
down to a couple amino acids, and you don't get
44:36
into the mechanistic, but I do. And
44:39
if you're eating animal
44:42
protein, specifically, methionine, which
44:44
is an amino acid that's more common
44:46
in animal protein. And
44:48
tryptophan These things
44:51
will raise a compound called
44:53
ImmTOR. And
44:56
the theory goes that if you have more of
44:58
those, then ImmTOR,
45:01
which causes growth in tissues, would
45:03
be higher, and therefore your cancer risk would be higher.
45:07
And that's one of the reasons intermittent
45:09
fasting seems to be important. And I think
45:11
you'll also find the fasting practices common
45:13
in a lot of your blue Zones as well. It's
45:15
not a practice. It's it was an involuntary.
45:19
Okay. More personal. investing.
45:22
Yeah. k. But they did real
45:24
fasting. Every one of the blue zones,
45:27
I'd
45:27
say, suffer to fast. But you're right, fasting
45:29
was part of their
45:31
their their history. So it's like it's
45:33
this interesting puzzle. It's like a big Rubik's cube, but
45:35
I don't know whoever gonna solve it all for everyone
45:37
because there's probably individual stuff
45:40
here. There are some people where like,
45:42
did I try it? I don't feel good. And there are many
45:44
other people say, yes, I try it. feel good. It's not
45:46
gonna be the same for everyone. but
45:49
the principles of fewer toxins don't
45:51
eat ultra processed foods.
45:53
I think we're in very
45:55
firm agreement on that one, Dave.
45:57
Yes. I I violently Asprey.
45:59
The
46:03
process food is at the core.
46:05
Is that we're and probably sugar, refined
46:07
sugars. I think those two things
46:09
are the number one and number two
46:11
scoundrels in our diet and
46:14
The other stuff I it's fine tuning
46:16
it. What
46:16
about seed oils? Like canola
46:19
and soy and corn? Are those better
46:21
than sugar or worse than sugar in terms of your
46:23
It's hard to say, but
46:25
they're not good.
46:26
Yeah.
46:27
I I only use olive oil.
46:29
Yep. Zones of the things that blew me
46:31
away as I was going through your recipes
46:34
in here, you had a crust, of course,
46:36
I have gluten that I'm not a fan of. You had
46:38
a crust that was made out of tallow.
46:40
I I think you probably found the only animal
46:42
product in there. And III
46:45
had the you know, I tried
46:47
to be journalistically honest about
46:49
these things. You know, this was a a
46:51
food archaeologist who
46:54
recreating a Thanksgiving, well,
46:56
an early seventeenth century meal.
46:58
Yeah.
46:59
And, yeah, those they
47:01
didn't they didn't have coconut oil there. That's
47:03
why I put coconut oil as as the alternative.
47:06
People in blue zones did eat
47:10
meat. They did eat
47:12
cheese. They did eat some butter.
47:14
Well, not really Not cows.
47:17
more sheep
47:18
and and
47:19
I I guess the Cheap and
47:21
good. Just because sheep and good are cheaper. Those are
47:23
more poverty animals than than cows. Yeah.
47:26
a cow that almost no cow was in any
47:28
blue zones. But
47:31
that, you know, my main work Dave
47:32
I get hired
47:34
by insurance companies. I have a
47:37
company
47:37
of two hundred people and
47:39
we go into cities and we help change
47:42
the environment
47:42
rather than changing people's behaviors.
47:45
And
47:46
when you're dealing with talking to
47:48
whole populations of people, you
47:51
you can't be it's hard to
47:53
be nuanced. You have to be very
47:55
simple. And for the blue zone
47:57
brand, I've made the decision that
47:59
we
47:59
we
48:01
only promote whole food plant based.
48:03
We know people are gonna get meat
48:05
in their everyday life, but we when
48:07
eating sort of a blue Zones way, we
48:10
we put forth the whole food plant Dave
48:12
knowing that people might slip some
48:14
cheese or some butter or some meat in
48:16
these recipes. But the base recipes
48:19
tastes maniacally delicious and
48:21
they're a hundred percent whole food plant based.
48:24
They take less than a half hour to make and
48:27
they are the core of the longevity
48:30
diets from around the world.
48:33
So if the populations in
48:35
these areas, eight as much
48:37
meat as they could get. They just didn't have very much
48:39
meat, and they're eating it five times
48:42
a month on on average. And
48:44
probably, some months
48:46
during, you know, the end of the season when you're
48:48
gonna harvest an animal or something to Dave more than
48:50
because they -- Correct. -- it was it was done
48:52
seasonally. the With
48:55
all of that stuff, are you a little
48:58
concerned that that which would been a precious
49:00
food to them is just missing from a whole
49:02
food plant based item?
49:04
Well, their meat consumption
49:05
has
49:06
quintupled. And at the same time,
49:09
their chronic disease rates
49:12
have skyrocketed and their life expectancy
49:14
is plummeting. Now, again, that's just
49:16
a correlation. And also,
49:19
what's also entered their diet is a lot
49:21
more processed foods. So They got
49:23
drugs of corn oil. At the same time, they
49:25
got more meat. because that's always that can
49:27
found. That's correct. Correct. But it's
49:29
hard to know what you know,
49:31
we do know that
49:33
the standard American diet,
49:35
which is includes about a hundred
49:37
and forty pounds of meat per person
49:39
per year
49:40
and about I'm Two hundred twenty
49:43
pounds, hundred and forty pounds of sugar
49:45
per person per year and these inflammatory
49:48
oils. We know it's killing us. We
49:50
know it's driving about true true
49:52
trillion. It's hard to know
49:54
which of those components are doing
49:57
the most damage. If you
49:58
look at the Adventist Health
49:59
Study, again, filed a hundred and three
50:02
thousand Americans for thirty years.
50:04
You see pretty clearly the people
50:06
who are either a hundred percent
50:08
plant based or eating some fish,
50:10
the pascatarians. They have they're
50:12
living the longest with the lowest rates of
50:15
disease, and they also have the healthiest weight.
50:17
they
50:17
weigh about twenty pounds less. So
50:20
there's probably some epidemiology study
50:22
that shows that people eat a lot of meat
50:24
healthier. I'm not aware of it.
50:26
Buettner, you
50:29
know, your specialty and your lot
50:31
better than me, as knowing
50:33
these sort of micronutrients and
50:36
how they interact with their genes and
50:38
our bodies
50:39
and I
50:41
I don't
50:41
know that science as well as I know the
50:43
population science. So I
50:46
I generally speaking, you
50:47
know,
50:48
here's what these populations do
50:50
I think we both agree that
50:52
it's smarter to try different
50:55
foods that work best for us, but
50:58
pay attention from both camps
51:00
of research and draw your own conclusions
51:02
because it's your life.
51:04
You're you're totally right. It
51:06
is your life and And
51:08
I I have
51:09
run the gamut because I I very
51:11
much have have tried all
51:13
these different diets to find what worked and
51:15
and I would have rather not written a
51:17
diet book, except I just realized I
51:19
thought I I and I I still believe that
51:21
I found you some some gaps in
51:24
our understandings that we take advantage of
51:26
around certain buttons that get pushed
51:28
for certain people. And
51:30
I I'm always tormented because I'll
51:33
see one paper that says one
51:35
thing, and I'll see another paper that says the opposite
51:38
thing. Yeah. And and so many
51:40
people listening are so confused right
51:42
now. Right? And the end
51:44
of the day is you can
51:46
tease out on some papers, you know, if it's funded
51:48
by animal rights
51:50
terrorist group. then maybe
51:53
they didn't have health. They had manipulation
51:55
of your behavior as as part of their
51:58
agenda. Or if it's funded by, you know,
52:00
the American Meat and Dairy Association,
52:02
assuming there is a settlement association.
52:04
Right. And and so you can look at funding
52:07
And then at the end of the day, you can read through the papers
52:09
if you have the knowledge and understanding to do that.
52:12
And what I just found was for me to survive
52:14
and even to thrive. I had
52:17
to do that. And I was willing to do
52:19
it. And I I still see compounding
52:21
papers, and then I looked for, okay, was there a mistake?
52:23
And then sometimes there's pockets of populations,
52:26
there's so much we don't know. The
52:28
fear of making a mistake nutritionally keeps
52:31
a lot of people from stepping up. And
52:34
what I want to say here is you look like they're reasonably
52:36
healthy. You haven't run the anti aging panels
52:39
where we can compare numbers. And even if we
52:41
did, you're an end of Zones. an end of
52:43
one worth were small studies. But everyone
52:45
listening is a small study. Like, it's totally
52:47
fine. Go eat a whole bunch beans and see how
52:49
it works. And
52:50
and and use a good recipe because
52:53
I don't want to turn you off to them. That's
52:55
a
52:55
fair point. Make sure that you don't just toss them in
52:57
Japan, boil them, and eat them. And the same thing with rice,
52:59
like you rinse it, you steam it. So there's
53:02
nothing wrong with preparing foods to
53:04
make them more nutrient available
53:07
and less toxic for us. And like that's
53:09
a core part of human behavior forever, knowing
53:11
how to do that well for beans and be really
53:13
in your interests. Right? I
53:16
really appreciate your time, Dan. It was fantastic.
53:19
Finally connecting with you. Thank you for
53:21
the work you're doing. And to tease out what
53:23
works for people. Have a wonderful
53:25
day. And guys, blue Zones. American
53:27
Kitchens, his new book. Thank
53:29
you very much, David. And I look forward to meeting
53:31
you in Austin. Yes.
53:33
As you come to Miami, Mikasa is
53:35
too possible. Thank you. I'll come on
53:37
over. As long as you don't mind, it'll meet in the corner of your
53:39
fridge. We'll be good. That's alright. We'll
53:42
we'll carten off of section. Really
53:44
enjoy to meet you, and thank you for the lively
53:46
conversation. Alright. Thanks, my brother. Alright.
53:48
Have a have a good day. Your listening
53:51
to the human upgrade with Dave Asbury.
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