Longevity

[00:10] Rory: My name is Rory O’Toole, and my name is Matt Schultz.

[00:14] Matt: And this is how to be the.

[00:17] Rory: Podcast where we discuss ancient wisdom, modern hacks, paperback self help books, and pithy.

[00:23] Matt: Platitudes in the hopes of figuring out the best way to live this one precious and wild life.

[00:30] Rory: When it comes to life, is it quality or quantity that matters? Is mortality a natural part of the human experience or an enemy to be defeated? Join us as we discuss longevity.

[01:05] Matt: Hi, Matt.

[01:07] Rory: Hey, Rory.

[01:08] Matt: So we haven’t recorded in a minute because, well, of the geopolitical situation and also travel. We’ve both been traveling. No, have I been traveling? No.

[01:26] Rory: You’Re traveling.

[01:27] Matt: Soon I will be traveling. That’s true.

[01:30] Rory: Yeah. You’re always getting your tenses confused.

[01:33] Matt: Yeah.

[01:35] Rory: Past happened. Roar. Future will happen.

[01:38] Matt: Got it. Okay. See, I live in the present, so sometimes it confuses me. Both of our brothers had babies.

[01:46] Rory: Yeah.

[01:47] Matt: And we’ve just been together.

[01:50] Rory: They’re a couple.

[01:52] Matt: They had the same baby, actually.

[01:54] Rory: Yeah, they had the same baby.

[02:00] Matt: So, yeah, we’ve been off our normal schedule, but I think this episode will come out in January. Right now it’s December, and I think we hope to be really back on normal scheduled programming, but it depends on the reality of our lives. Yeah, we’ve been doing a really good job with every other Wednesday, and by years and years, I mean like a year and a half or two.

[02:25] Rory: But why should we do more and better than what we expect from network tv shows? Me and Rory were just talking about this. How gone are the days of the reliable tv season? Off for the summer, back in the fall, back with the school year for another 23 season run? No. Handmaid’s tale. Next season, eight years later, 15 years later, they’ll let us know, I guess severance mysteriously severed from our lives.

[03:04] Matt: That’s the thing. Well, there are pros and cons to it. Okay, blame the writer strike.

[03:09] Rory: No, that cannot account for all of this.

[03:11] Matt: No, it really can’t. I mean, the writer strike, I think, highlighted it because with these sitcoms and with these weekly shows, they would write the episode and film it all in the same week, right? But now they do these capsule shows like severance, where they write them all, then they film them all, and then they release them. And that is delaying. Now that the writer strikes. Open or done not open. Now that the writer strikes done, they have to write all the shows and film them. Whereas if this was, er, in 1999, jump back to the writers room, get Clooney’s makeup artist, put them on camera. We have a new episode next, baby.

[03:50] Rory: So. But what about the Sopranos? 6ft under. Those had regular seasons. Granted, they weren’t quite a fall to summer show, but those had regular seasons and those weren’t written that week.

[04:10] Matt: How many episodes were in those seasons?

[04:13] Rory: My guess is eleven.

[04:16] Matt: See, because Sex and the City had the full package. Like 24 episodes, 22 episodes. Even though it was on HBO.

[04:24] Rory: Okay, so season six of the Sopranos had 21 episodes, baby.

[04:32] Matt: Yeah. These lazy bones over here.

[04:35] Rory: Season 213. Season 313.

[04:40] Matt: Wow, that’s interesting.

[04:41] Rory: Season four. Okay. They had a lot to do in season six. I see. They had a lot of story to tell. Everything else is 13. In season six. They were like. They had trouble fitting it all in.

[04:53] Matt: But see, if you get 13 episodes of a prestige tv show these days, that’s a really long season. I feel like a lot of them are eight.

[05:00] Rory: Eight. And you know what I sometimes.

[05:03] Matt: You know what I hate the most is a show like insecure where you go eight episodes and nothing happens. Wasn’t there a whole season of insecure where she was planning a block party?

[05:13] Rory: That was like the climax season.

[05:15] Matt: Like, why are we watching you plan a block party? That’s like too close to real life.

[05:21] Rory: Well, that had always been her dream throughout the show. She never had a different dream that they set up as what the show was going to be about.

[05:31] Matt: I think we talked about this in another episode, how she’s supposed to be a rapper and then now she just wants to plan a block party. That’s not interesting for the audience to watch someone do some event planning. Like event planning? I do it in real life. No one wants to watch me do it.

[05:48] Rory: Yeah, we got to get the vendors. Oh, the local restaurants want to participate. Great.

[06:02] Matt: That is too quotadian. That’s realism right there. That’s an old italian lady peeling potatoes for 40 minutes.

[06:09] Rory: That show did not know what it wanted to be season one. It was a best friend show and a show about an aspiring rapper. One of the seasons tried to transform it into a sex in the city style four gal ensemble.

[06:28] Matt: Yeah.

[06:29] Rory: And I thought, okay, this is where we’re. No. Then we refocused on just Issa Rae planning a block party.

[06:40] Matt: I didn’t even watch the final season because I was so mad at the season before that where nothing happened.

[06:46] Rory: And then she made another show. I really think we’ve already had this discussion here. I have another topic I want to talk about.

[06:52] Matt: Okay.

[06:52] Rory: Stupid. A stupid topic. Dimmer switches.

[06:57] Matt: Okay.

[06:59] Rory: Is there more that you. To turn your light into? A light that dims you just change the switch, or is there more you have to do behind the scenes level of the switch?

[07:13] Matt: Well, they recently changed the lights in my office to a dimmer, which was so nice. Is so nice is present. Was that they changed the whole light fixture, and then they were supposed to do it in our hallway space. And then they found out the light fixtures didn’t fit. So we can’t have a dimmer out there.

[07:40] Rory: Oh, see, I don’t get how dimmers work. I’m like, you can control how much light goes into the light bulb. Don’t light bulbs have, like, a certain wattage? That’s their wattage. And including that wattage, I thought it was up to.

[07:57] Matt: Up to.

[07:58] Rory: So just by having this switch, you can slow down the stream of electricity that’s going around that filament.

[08:10] Matt: We need light bulb literacy. Because once I started having to change light bulbs in my own house, I was very confused. Like, the color of the lights, if you’re not careful, you get a hideous led light that’s fluorescent, basically.

[08:25] Rory: Well, something I always think about always is in the arcades project, Walter Binyamin, a vast compendium of historical tidbits. And there’s a whole section about the switch from gas light to incandescent light. Up with incandescent light.

[08:51] Matt: What’s incandescent light? Like a light bulb.

[08:55] Rory: Filament bulbs.

[08:56] Matt: Light bulbs versus the little torch. Not torch, but.

[09:04] Rory: The little gas lamp. And people hated it. People were repulsed by their spouses faces. Everyone all of a sudden looked terrible. And the romance was drained from the world. And we grew up with incandescent lights, which now we think the romance has been drained by the world with the transition to Led.

[09:30] Matt: Yeah, it is terrible. Why haven’t they thought about the quality of light when they’re inventing?

[09:36] Rory: Yeah, they don’t think about it. They think we’re interested in brightness, and I’m not. But also, there are a lot of lighting options out there. And probably because I’ve never lived in one apartment for more than two years, I haven’t, like, actually, in my Boston apartment, which I will be returning to next year, I was doing some nice things with lighting. It was a real glow.

[10:05] Matt: Learned a little fact from this british man I follow on instagram. And he was talking about how there’s a performance right around the holiday Christmas time in England, and a woman came out, the fairy queen of some opera or something, and boom, all of a sudden there was a light on her head. She had a little filament light, a little light bulb on her head. And the audience was aghast. Some people covered their eyes. Some people applauded and cheered. It was like the first time they had seen a light bulb. And could you imagine being in that audience? Will I ever live through history like that?

[10:55] Rory: Yeah. The wonder of it.

[10:58] Matt: It’s unbelievable.

[10:59] Rory: Picturing sort of an art deco. World’s fair.

[11:03] Matt: Yes, exactly.

[11:05] Rory: And she’s looking like the. Who’s the woman? Paramount Pictures. No, it’s not paramount. It’s Columbia.

[11:16] Matt: Yeah, Columbia.

[11:18] Rory: She’s the Columbia woman. A symbol of progress.

[11:23] Matt: Expedition.

[11:25] Rory: Yeah. See, it all connects.

[11:28] Matt: The thing is that. Oh, no, the thing is. Sorry. And that’s why they’re called fairy lights, which you put on your Christmas tree because she was the Fairy queen with the light on her head.

[11:38] Rory: But were they fairy light? What are called fairy lights?

[11:41] Matt: Like Christmas tree lights. Have you never heard them called fairy lights?

[11:45] Rory: She had string lights on her head.

[11:48] Matt: No, but somehow it happened.

[11:55] Rory: I want to. This etymology. I’m credulous.

[12:00] Matt: Are you really? Okay.

[12:03] Rory: Credulous. I’m incredulous.

[12:07] Matt: Okay. Well, I’m really excited for our topic today. We are talking about longevity, living more, living longer, you know, and there’s a.

[12:19] Rory: Connection here with the light. Do you. Do you want to burn bright or do you want to burn long? And, you know, there’s a light bulb in Chicago that has never gone out for, like, 200 years.

[12:32] Matt: There is?

[12:33] Rory: Yeah.

[12:34] Matt: Where?

[12:35] Rory: That’s the thing. They used to make light bulbs that never went out. And then they started making them intentionally breakable so that ge could make more money. It’s at a firehouse in Chicago. Also, another part of it is because they never turn it off. Turning on and off is most of your wear and tear on a filament bulb. Wow.

[12:57] Matt: How do you know so much about filament bulbs?

[13:00] Rory: I don’t know. It’s just something I know.

[13:05] Matt: Okay, interesting. So then we had to go back because the whole thing about an led light is that it lasts a really long time, which it does.

[13:16] Rory: You looked up like you were scared it was going to hear.

[13:19] Matt: You’ve had. We buy, obviously. Do they even sell non led light bulbs anymore?

[13:26] Rory: Well, yes, because Trump scaled back the regulations on. Oh, I don’t know what the situation is under Biden. I really do know a lot about.

[13:38] Matt: What are you talking about? You know about light bulb policy. How do you know this?

[13:44] Rory: I’m a real light bulb wonk.

[13:50] Matt: The regulations.

[13:53] Rory: Yeah. Obama era regulations made it really hard to find soft, romantic sexual lighting. Well, that’s fine for him. He’s already married with kids. But what about us singles? Obama.

[14:07] Matt: Wait. As an aside, I’ll cut this out, but did you know that after we left that party when you were here, the Obama girls showed up?

[14:15] Rory: Oh, my God. You should leave that in.

[14:22] Matt: I know. Isn’t that sad that we missed?

[14:24] Rory: Were you still.

[14:25] Matt: Oh, we left at the same time.

[14:28] Rory: Darn.

[14:29] Matt: Two ships passing in the night.

[14:31] Rory: Do you think we would have spoken.

[14:32] Matt: To them and the Obama girls? No. Maybe it’s a party. If you’re not there to chat with people, what are you there for?

[14:44] Rory: I know, but there was, like, 200 people there, and I talked to, like, three, other than the people I came with.

[14:49] Matt: Anywho, okay, so longevity, we got really off topic.

[14:57] Rory: Pulled back into light bulbs and then into the Obama gals. But longevity. Living longer, living more, living better, living.

[15:06] Matt: Longer, living healthy lives. There’s a lot to say about, but I guess we could start with. I watched this documentary. I think, Matt, you watched some of it, too, about blue zones. So, blue zones are these small little pockets around the world where people seem to know, not seem to live. They do live beyond the average life expectancy. And people study these blue zones to figure out what’s the secret to longevity. So the six blue zones are Okinawa, Japan, a small area in Sardinia, Italy, a seven day event. This community in California, an island in Greece called Icaria, Nicoya, Costa Rica. And that’s it. Those are the blue zones.

[16:01] Rory: Is it possible that’s just not about lifestyle? That it’s just, like, interesting genetic pockets and families that keep reproducing within a gene pool? Do they talk about that?

[16:12] Matt: They do. They kind of address that, and they say it’s like. Or I looked it up, and I think they said it’s like 30% genes, 70% lifestyle. And part of that has to, like, for example, in Okinawa, it’s like, yes, there are a bunch of people who are, like, 100 and doing great. But now, because the lifestyle has changed there so much, Okinawa actually has the highest obesity rate in all of Japan. So they don’t think that the younger generation is going to live that long.

[16:42] Rory: The highest obesity rate in all of Japan? Okinawa.

[16:45] Matt: Yeah.

[16:46] Rory: Why?

[16:48] Matt: I don’t know. I was. My hairdresser is japanese, and I was asking him about Okinawa, and he was saying that it’s very american there now because it’s like a big military base.

[17:00] Rory: Okay.

[17:01] Matt: That the answer to obesity is, like, importing american lifestyle.

[17:06] Rory: Some Americans there. Yeah. America is kind of a flop in that way.

[17:12] Matt: We are a flop. I think our life expectancy is going down.

[17:17] Rory: Yeah. Because of. But, okay, something that really annoys me, it’s like my little pet peeve is that people don’t understand what we mean when we talk about average lifespan. So when people hear, oh, the average lifespan in 1840 was 42, they think that most people were living till 42. No, people lived till 60, 70, 80. They lived long lives, long normal lives. There was just a ton of infant mortality.

[17:54] Matt: Well, I don’t think that they lived as long as we did. I actually just saw a video on this about the roman empire and it was common. If you survived childhood, you would live to like 45, 55, 65. But getting into the think not impossible. There are people who did it, but it was unusual. Let’s say.

[18:20] Rory: I think people were living till 70, 80. I haven’t looked into it. I just know of an ancient poem that says, what are man’s years? 70 if he’s normal, 80 if he’s in good health.

[18:33] Matt: Okay, well, one ancient, from one area, from one time period, I guess. I mean, it also depends on the time in roman. Roman empire is different than like, medieval Europe. They’re going to have different life expectancy. Yeah.

[18:49] Rory: Anywho, and when we say that life expectancy is going down in America, it’s because there’s a ton of what they call deaths of. I mean, it’s not that that’s not significant, but people who live a healthy lifestyle in America are still living long lives.

[19:14] Matt: They call them deaths of despair.

[19:17] Rory: Yeah.

[19:18] Matt: Oh, that’s poetic. Sad.

[19:21] Rory: Yeah.

[19:23] Matt: And the other thing is, honestly, what your socioeconomic situation is also greatly influences how long you’re going to live, sadly, in America.

[19:34] Rory: Oh, yeah.

[19:35] Matt: So it’s like life expectancy. What is it, like 75, 78, 75 for men, 78 for women in America. But if you’re not a drug addict and if you have access to health care, you probably could live a lot longer.

[19:51] Rory: Oh, my God. Can I tell you something about America?

[19:55] Matt: Yes.

[19:56] Rory: Okay. So I got a big old Doctor’s bill from the last time, doctor in America, and they said, you have no health insurance. Excuse me, I have health insurance. I look at my health insurance, it’s been canceled. It’s been canceled for months.

[20:16] Matt: Why?

[20:17] Rory: Because I didn’t pay for one month and they just canceled it.

[20:24] Matt: And then you paid afterwards.

[20:26] Rory: It was $60, an unpaid bill of $60.

[20:30] Matt: So it was canceled from that point forward or then they started recharging you.

[20:35] Rory: It was canceled from that point forward. I didn’t notice because I don’t pay it every month. I usually pay it every three months, and I pay 180 whatever, and it’s never been a problem. And I was like, I used to pay every three months or whatever. I never let the bill get that big. And she goes, they were probably letting you slide because of COVID but now they’re tightening the belt. And I was like, $60. You took away my health insurance, dude.

[21:03] Matt: This is why people die from despair. Because honestly, I really think that if I ever kill myself, I’m going to put in my suicide note. It’s because of insurance companies. It’s because of making doctors appointments. It’s because I needed to renew my contact prescription in order to buy new contacts. It’s because I had to be on customer service with Amazon to get my Amazon locker over, like, open. This is why life is so unbearable. Customer service issues.

[21:32] Rory: Yes. You should write a book about.

[21:37] Matt: Would. It would raise my blood pressure and influence my longevity.

[21:43] Rory: Yeah, it’s pathetic. It’s pathetic when you find a foreign.

[21:48] Matt: Object in your guacamole from chipotle and you can’t get a person on the phone to tell it.

[21:57] Rory: Yeah. And you didn’t even know what it was.

[22:00] Matt: No, it was the color of human flesh of a mushroom.

[22:05] Rory: Keep going. Let’s see, May. Our listeners will know.

[22:07] Matt: And the shape of a piece of chicken. But I’m telling you, it was not a piece of chicken.

[22:11] Rory: Let’s review. Shape of chicken, texture of mushroom, color of human flesh. That’s a part of a person. I’m afraid it acquires a mushroomy texture. After being in.

[22:29] Matt: What we endure as humans, who wants to live longer? Okay, so that is the thing. I guess we’ve talked about this before. How much longer do you want to live? What’s your ideal age of death?

[22:45] Rory: 91.

[22:47] Matt: 91 is a great age.

[22:49] Rory: Yeah, you get too far into 90, people are just sad you didn’t make it to 100. So if you get past 93, then you’re committing to the whole thing. So, yeah, I want to be in great shape through my 70s. Decrepit in my 80s, but still in good spirits. And then at 91, I want a rapid deterioration.

[23:26] Matt: Okay.

[23:28] Rory: So that leaving this earthly body is a relief. Is a relief.

[23:34] Matt: That’s a really good point. Oh, my God. Yeah, you definitely want to be looking forward to your bol. You don’t want to be like in 30 rock when Jack’s real dad says, oh, the greens are sharpest. Attack till the end. My father died screaming.

[23:52] Rory: Oh, yeah, you don’t want to die screaming. I want to be a little fuzzy.

[23:57] Matt: You want to be ready to go for sure. Information for the blue zones. What did they find out from them that we should all be doing right.

[24:08] Rory: Wait, hold on. I’m having anxiety now that because I said I want to die at 91, that now I will, and I won’t get to be 100 or 110.

[24:18] Matt: Oh, like predicting your death, like dear old.

[24:22] Rory: It’s like bad juju.

[24:24] Matt: Dear old Mark Twain.

[24:26] Rory: Yeah, but also I don’t want to undo it because 91 is pretty good. So I don’t want to undo what I just said. And then God will be like, all right, you asked for it.

[24:39] Matt: God, are you listening? God? We want you to take exactly the right time, God. Exactly the right time. Don’t let his opinion have any bearing. You know the truth, God. How’s that?

[24:51] Rory: All right, we’re just going to sit with it.

[24:54] Matt: Did that help you, though?

[24:55] Rory: I’m really having anxiety. Isn’t that crazy? The human brain is so stupid.

[25:01] Matt: Don’t you want relief from this human brain?

[25:08] Rory: The idiocy? Okay, let’s move on. Okay, so lifestyle, what were these people doing in the blue zones?

[25:16] Matt: Okay, so there’s a little circle, and we’ll post the circle when we post our inner. When we post the episode, but move naturally by hand, whatever that means. Garden walk. I mean, amazing, really. We should be moving a little bit more. I mean me, when I say we, I mean me. Outlook unwind. Have faith, have purpose. So a lot of these people especially know, a lot of them are religious or they have the purpose of, like, in Costa Rica, these people are working. There’s this gaucho who’s like a hundred years old. I don’t know if Scoutcho is the right term. That might just be argentinian, but this horseback band who was just 101 and hopping up and down on the horse, he really felt like his life purpose was to tend to the farm. And then the seven day Adventists, they’re religious up something like, if you go to church once a week, you increase your life expectancy by like five years. But Matt, not if you go to church five times a week, just once a week.

[26:24] Rory: I only go twice a week.

[26:26] Matt: Church on a Tuesday. Eat wisely. So mostly plant based, how many bowls.

[26:33] Rory: Of oatmeal a day can I have?

[26:35] Matt: They recommend no less and no more than a troughful that you would get worse. Drink wine and eat in moderation. So in Okinawa, they say eat until you’re 80% full, which I actually think is like a tenant of intuitive eating. Really. You’re supposed to think about how full you are, like, on a ten point scale, and you usually want to be at an eight.

[27:02] Rory: Yeah, I love that they had a little word for it.

[27:05] Matt: What is it?

[27:06] Rory: Harahachi.

[27:07] Matt: Harahachi. And then connect. Family first, partnership. Right. Tribe. Yeah. Like, if you’re. If your significant other dies, you’re way more likely to have.

[27:23] Rory: We have a lot of control over it. Sometimes you don’t. You get sick, whatever. But there is this other element to longevity that really has to do with your stake, how much stake you have in being here. She held on for one last Christmas, like, that kind of a thing, living an active life, but not by going to the gym and doing high resistance workouts. Just by living an active life, which is the exact opposite of what we do. We sit in front of our computers all day and just sit all the time. And I think that one of the healthiest periods in my life was when I was a waiter at the cafe.

[28:13] Matt: Oh, for sure. When I was working in the sushi restaurant.

[28:16] Rory: Moving, but not very fast. It was a slow place. It wasn’t that busy. Kind of just throughout the day.

[28:24] Matt: Absolutely. I mean, that’s why they point to gardening in the blue zones, because it’s like you’re just doing slow movements, but you’re moving around. You’re also in nature. I don’t know if that has anything to do with it. And you’re using your fine motor skills, your gross motor skills also, they were talking about this place in Sardinia was very hilly, so these people are just. I don’t even know how an older person does it. I guess they’re so used to it. But they’re constantly walking up these really steep hills. Slowly, though. And they did find the correlation between walking up hills and living a long time. And it just seemed like these people were doing it. It was so ingrained in them. So the opposite of me, when I’m faced with a staircase, what would it be like? I wish that I could be free from the torture of inclines, the fear of them. No. I find them so daunting, so exhausting, so irritating. I have to walk up a hill. Have you ever forgotten something up three flights of stairs?

[29:28] Rory: Yeah, it’s terrible.

[29:30] Matt: Are just like, oh, I got to go back and get that. They don’t seem to think that’s, oh, terrible because it’s so ingrained in their lives.

[29:36] Rory: Yeah. Well, we have a friend who lives on the peak of a very tall hill.

[29:40] Matt: Do we?

[29:41] Rory: A friend who I stayed with recently, and we went on a walk, and then we’re walking up the hill. And she was like, we go up the hill slowly, and I said, what if you’re in a rush and you need to go quickly? And she goes, can’t do it. You got to go slow.

[29:59] Matt: That’s the thing.

[30:00] Rory: That’s the thing. So, wine. Talk to me about wine.

[30:04] Matt: Well, I don’t know. It’s mostly like these people. I don’t know, there’s this. They drink wine. They don’t drink too much. It’s all moderation, yada, yada. And I don’t know, there seems to be this. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it feels like, to me, like a fallacy that in Europe, the way they prepare the food means that gluten intolerant people can eat bread and you can drink more wine because it’s prepared more authentically and it’s actually healthier for you. Have you heard those tropes before?

[30:39] Rory: No.

[30:40] Matt: It’s like, I was just listening to this.

[30:42] Rory: That doesn’t surprise me.

[30:43] Matt: Who’s like, I could drink all the beer I wanted in Germany, even though I can’t have any here in America. And I’m like, what?

[30:51] Rory: Yeah. Like, not even like, a good beer in America. America is just sort of, like, innately virtuous.

[31:02] Matt: Exactly.

[31:03] Rory: Yeah. It feels a little, know, vegan, but in Europe, I can eat meat all the time. I can just eat it. Joking. It’s a little joke.

[31:14] Matt: No, it was a little joke.

[31:16] Rory: So the wine thing, I mean, there’s been all these studies out recently that are like, there’s no amount of alcohol that’s healthy. But, yeah, they always ask these people who live to be 110 what they did, and they’re never health nuts, these people. No, that’s the thing. They’re always like, a cigar.

[31:43] Matt: She starts her day every morning with a natty ice.

[31:47] Rory: Yeah.

[31:52] Matt: I know. We’re definitely being told that alcohol is really bad for you. Now. We’re in one of those phases, but at the same time, alcohol, very lindy. It’s been around since the. Since when did it come?

[32:05] Rory: We don’t know, but ancient, ancient, ancient, ancient dawn of human society. I don’t even want to say civilization. I think it’s earlier than civilization. Just society. Just some buddies.

[32:20] Matt: Obviously, the way people drink can be very unhealthy.

[32:24] Rory: Sure.

[32:25] Matt: But these people in Greece have, and probably sardines, have a glass of wine every day. I’m sure.

[32:31] Rory: Yeah. I wish I had wine right now. I would drink it if it was here.

[32:38] Matt: One thing that they didn’t address in these blue zone episodes was like air quality. I feel like I’m going to die young because of the terrible air quality here in Los Angeles.

[32:48] Rory: Well, I remember reading something once that gave me false comfort as a smoker back when I was a smoker, that people who do autopsies can’t tell the difference between a smoker and a non smoker, but they can tell what city you’re from.

[33:07] Matt: Ew, really?

[33:10] Rory: I guess. I’m sure they can’t be like, phoenix, la, but they can tell if you’re from a dense urban area or not. Tel Aviv has terrible air quality.

[33:22] Matt: Okay, so then this guy who was exploring all these blue zones, he was pretty annoying, obviously, but he tried to create a blue zone in Minnesota. And what he did there in a small town in Minnesota, he got, like, the town on board and he created walking groups so people were getting more social interaction and also moving. He also organized some form of volunteerism and somehow got people to eat healthier food. And it actually worked. People they were adding in four years or something like that. They added several months to people’s lives. However, they judged that we don’t know.

[34:09] Rory: That’s interesting. I wonder what the lifespan is here. 82.

[34:17] Matt: That’s so old. What is it in America?

[34:21] Rory: 77. Let’s see. Men and women. Women, 84. Men, 80.

[34:31] Matt: In Tel Aviv.

[34:32] Rory: In Israel.

[34:33] Matt: In Israel. And just a couple other fun facts for our listeners. People who play tennis have the longest life expectancy.

[34:41] Rory: Really? A lot of walking side to side.

[34:45] Matt: Yeah. That’s interesting because I consider tennis can be very athletic. I wouldn’t call it gentle movement.

[34:53] Rory: No, it’s definitely not gentle movement. But you’re not running far. And for sustained amounts of time, get little breaks.

[35:01] Matt: You get little breaks. And a study allegedly showed that casual interactions keep you living longer than diet and exercise. Now, you have a lot of casual interactions, but I wouldn’t say that they’re of the positive variety.

[35:15] Rory: No, but I swear by casual interactions, I love knowing my coffee people, a great rapport with my coffee people. I love knowing my baker and having a little chitchat with the baker.

[35:34] Matt: Chitchat is so important. And our generation and younger, millennials and younger have phobias of it.

[35:40] Rory: Yeah.

[35:42] Matt: They do not want to talk to the hostess at a restaurant, receptionist at the dentist. Me and Kathy, we go way.

[35:57] Rory: It’s. For me, it’s a chance to connect with a very specific side of myself. Sort of a corny joke. Oh, he’s very cozy.

[36:07] Matt: Of course, for me, it’s like I’m channeling my mother, the great chat chitchatter of all time.

[36:13] Rory: Yeah, I’m channeling my father. When I do it.

[36:17] Matt: It’s almost like I’m cosplaying an adult.

[36:20] Rory: Yeah.

[36:21] Matt: Even though I certainly am an adult.

[36:25] Rory: Oh, my God. But do you know what I did today with the health connector, lady?

[36:30] Matt: Health connector? The one you were yelling at about the bill? Not yelling at. Sorry.

[36:34] Rory: No. I was very nice to her, and she was very nice and very helpful. And she said, when she re enrolled me, do you accept the terms and conditions of this new plan? And she went on and on this very formal language with all the pains and perjuries that that entails. It was so dramatic. So then when she was finished, I said yes. A million times, yes.

[36:59] Matt: Did she laugh?

[37:01] Rory: Oh, she chuckled.

[37:08] Matt: Glam dunk. The body electric study. Have you heard of this? Of course. NPR called it the body electric study.

[37:20] Rory: No.

[37:21] Matt: Okay. They showed the body electric by NPR in Columbia, showed that if you move five minutes every half hour, you are counteracting the harmful effects of sitting all day.

[37:34] Rory: That’s it? That’s all we got to do?

[37:35] Matt: Five minutes every half hour.

[37:37] Rory: It’s too much.

[37:38] Matt: That’s kind of a lot. It’s a lot of. So then they tried to implement it with normal people, and then they found that most people had a hard time remembering to move every half hour. But the more you moved, the more the effects you did have. So even if you did ten minutes an hour, there was still. Or five minutes an hour, there was still a positive effect.

[38:00] Rory: Well, you know what I loved when David Goey. Don Goey.

[38:06] Matt: Don goy. Yeah.

[38:07] Rory: We interviewed when you asked, how much meditating do you need to get the effects? And he was like, any amount, you’ll see effects from 30 seconds, you’ll see more benefits. From a minute, you’ll get more of a benefit. It’s like, just do what you can.

[38:26] Matt: Honestly, I don’t even think I’m. There’s. Matt’s moving. He’s doing his five minute movement. Thankfully, I have to pee all the time, so I always have to walk to the bathroom at work.

[38:37] Rory: I’m doing movements that are inspired by the name of the study I’m making. Body electric.

[38:44] Matt: Body electric study. Oh, my God. What was I thinking? Oh, I don’t even think it’s placebo. I really think I see an effect of ten minutes of meditation a day.

[38:54] Rory: Oh, I see.

[38:56] Matt: I probably meditate, like, five or six days a week. And the next day, if I skip a day, the next day, I am often in a worse mood. It’s like that instant.

[39:08] Rory: You know what I kind of want to do?

[39:10] Matt: No. I know some things you kind of want to do.

[39:14] Rory: I want to have a little notebook, a little journal where I just write the temperature outside the cloud cover and my mood.

[39:26] Matt: Do you know that my mom. I remember my mom was like, 20 years ago, like, I need to keep a journal where it’s just the weather and how I’m feeling. I’m like, why are you trying to see the correlation between weather and.

[39:42] Rory: Just weather and mood are not necessarily connected. They’re just two things that I’m curious about tracking, because I feel like right now, I’m like, it’s unseasonably warm for December in Israel. Is it, though, or do I misremember December? I could look it up, but I would like the subjective knowledge also.

[40:07] Matt: Yeah, well, the thing about mood, though, is, like, don’t you. Doesn’t your mood change 100 times a day?

[40:14] Rory: My mood changes 100 times a day, but I usually have an ambient anxiety level for a day. Oh, like, how much am I struggling with anxiety that day? General?

[40:30] Matt: That would be helpful, I actually think.

[40:33] Rory: And that I find, like, if I do my morning pages and meditate, it’s pretty clear that there’s a coalition, a correlation.

[40:44] Matt: There’s a coalition against anxiety in my life, then.

[40:48] Rory: Yeah, but then I’m like, am I really going to do this? Am I really going to go buy a little notebook?

[40:55] Matt: Is it the buying of the notebook?

[40:58] Rory: You know what? There’s a new book out that I’m not going to read, but that I read the headline of a review of, and it’s a history of thinking on paper. It’s a book about notebooks and notebook keepers. Da Vinci, Virginia Woolf. That might be an interesting topic for us to explore.

[41:24] Matt: Yeah. Recording.

[41:26] Rory: Journaling. Notebooks.

[41:27] Matt: Journaling. Journaling is a good. Yeah.

[41:29] Rory: Yeah. I mean, I’m definitely up to bringing in a little bit of awareness about long stretches of sitting.

[41:38] Matt: What’s a long stretch to you?

[41:41] Rory: 3 hours.

[41:42] Matt: Oh, sorry. I thought you were talking about long stretches of sitting. Like, meditatively.

[41:47] Rory: Oh, no.

[41:49] Matt: Like the bad sitting.

[41:51] Rory: Sedentary.

[41:52] Matt: Sedentary. Yeah. It’s really difficult. I mean, one thing I think I mentioned that does save me is that I have to use the bathroom so much, and the bathroom is really far. Not really far, but it’s definitely a five minute situation of movement for me. But this is like the tendency, the more you do, the more you see, and then you have these people, more results you see, and then you have these people who just go way too, you know? And then it’s like their whole life becomes about living longer, which takes me to my 9th point, which is that guy. I read this Atlantic article about that guy, which we might have all seen, and maybe other people have read this article, the guy who was transfusing his son’s blood into him to live forever. He’s like a Tech Bro who lives, I think, in Venice. His name is brian, with a y. And he.

[42:45] Rory: The younger, he transfused the y in.

[42:50] Matt: Yeah. His whole life is living forever. So to quote the article, he spent more than $4 million developing a life extension system called blueprint, in which he outsources every decision involving his body to a team of doctors who use DAta to develop a strict health regimen to reduce what Johnson calls his Biological Age. That system includes downing 111 pills a day, wearing a baseball cap that shoots red lights into his scalp, collecting his own StoOl samples, and sleeping with a tiny jetpack attached to his penis to monitor his nighttime erections. Johnson thinks any act that accelerates aging, like eating a cookie or getting less than 8 hours of sleep, is an act of violence. He believes Death is OptioNAl, and he plans to never do it.

[43:45] Rory: In the Jane Religion, you have those people Walk around with Brooms because they don’t want to step on a BUg, right?

[43:54] Matt: Yeah. They think it’s bad karma. I don’t know. You don’t want to kill anything?

[43:59] Rory: Don’t want to kill anything. This guy. But that’s kind of sweet.

[44:05] Matt: It is sweet. Stressful, though.

[44:09] Rory: But stressful. And one might argue a bit much. But it’s nice. We like the idea. Similarly, we like the idea of honoring the body and not doing violence to the body. But this seems like a terrible rebellion against nature. You hear my in decay. Aren’t these a part of the beauty of the world?

[44:33] Matt: There are plenty of. There are people. I think they’re called transhumanists, where they want to live forever. He’s not the only person. And it’s absolutely such a fundamental shift in our perception of life that I can’t even believe people can conceive of the notion. The idea that we’re going to die is so essential to the way that we perceive everything. If you take that away, every perception changes.

[45:03] Rory: Yeah, it’s like, what would life be if you didn’t die? If you knew that you were never going to die? It would really take the pep out of your step. I really believe that. I agree, because we already kind of feel like we have unlimited time, which is not true. And so we waste a lot of it right now. That’s okay. You don’t have to use every minute.

[45:32] Matt: To the max possible to. But death underlines everything. I think we do, whether we realize it or not. And sometimes it bubbles to the surface.

[45:42] Rory: Yeah.

[45:42] Matt: Becomes a fixation in ourselves during certain periods or after we lose someone.

[45:50] Rory: Well, I told you about this before, but I’m going to tell you and the audience about it. There was this gay man who was a guru about aging gracefully for gay men because he was like, we gay in a gay culture, we’re scared of aging. And then he turned 40 himself and he killed. Gay age guru suicide, the other side of 40. Okay.

[46:25] Matt: And he wasn’t even 40 yet.

[46:27] Rory: He was 49.

[46:29] Matt: Okay?

[46:30] Rory: Wouldn’t hit 50. His name was Bob Bergeron just before the planned publication of his book, the right side of 40. And his suicide note, written on the title page included the phrase about the book, it’s a lie based on bad information.

[46:53] Matt: Wait, he called his book a lie based on bad information?

[46:57] Rory: He had the book. It hadn’t been published yet. He had the copy. He wrote his suicide note on the title page, and he said about his own book, it’s a lie based on bad information. The book was a guide to aging gracefully for gay men and happily.

[47:11] Matt: Wow. I can’t even imagine. That’s the thing is, like, these people, they really view. I guess in his case, he views aging as the enemy, not death. He’d rather be death dead than aged.

[47:24] Rory: I mean, that’s a whole other thing that we haven’t really touched on, which is wanting to stay young forever, which is certainly a part of the longevity thing. And I think for a certain type of gay man, the idea of not being beautiful and fit and relevant.

[47:47] Matt: I mean, women too.

[47:49] Rory: Yes. It’s right in this because, yeah, we’re the same, you and I.

[47:58] Matt: I am obsessed with looking young. I really am. The other day.

[48:03] Rory: Really?

[48:03] Matt: You don’t look day over 27. And I was like, 27. You’re 36 years old. You can’t look 20 your whole life. And I just. The older I get, even if I look young for my age, that age of the way I look will still get older.

[48:22] Rory: Yeah. Now you’re just aging on two tracks.

[48:25] Matt: Yes, exactly. Now I have my real and the age I wish people thought I was.

[48:33] Rory: Yeah. And they’re both crawling towards the grave just at different speeds at the same speed.

[48:43] Matt: Yeah. It is hard. It’s like you do feel less relevant the older you get. You do feel like society cares about you less.

[48:49] Rory: Yeah, absolutely.

[48:51] Matt: I mean, I’m not in the dating pool anymore.

[48:53] Rory: They think they’re it. Don’t they know we’re still it?

[48:57] Matt: Yeah, exactly. I mean, thank God for shows like sex in the City.

[49:02] Rory: I said, do you know what’s interesting about your face right now?

[49:05] Matt: No.

[49:06] Rory: You look like you’re not wearing glasses.

[49:10] Matt: Well, I’m not.

[49:11] Rory: I know, but that means that look more normal to me for some reason.

[49:18] Matt: Today, I hate that look. The look of someone who should be wearing glasses, not wearing. Get them back on your face, dude.

[49:27] Rory: I like how they capture that with Millhouse in the Simpsons, when they take off his glasses, they don’t give him normal Simpsons character eyes. They give him little black dots.

[49:38] Matt: Exactly. That’s what people’s eyes look like. You should be wearing glasses now.

[49:44] Rory: Something I’m excited about with aging is getting glasses.

[49:49] Matt: You don’t want to have something on your face. It’s kind of.

[49:54] Rory: You know, I only started wearing a watch this year, and now I feel naked without one. Right when I lost my casio in Denver.

[50:04] Matt: Oh, you lost it? Oh, sad.

[50:07] Rory: I’m happy to be rid of that digital thing. I never used the timer. I never used the stopwatch. It was always beeping, booping, all these things. It only has three buttons, so it’s really hard to figure out how to turn this on and turn that off. Simple. An analog watch. Simple.

[50:26] Matt: Yes. That’s what I have. So to get back to the people who want to live forever, and I don’t really think that they know what they’re getting themselves into. I mean, we’d have to really reorg society. We couldn’t procreate anymore.

[50:41] Rory: Yeah, you would need to. I’m sure you’d have a lot. I don’t know. People would want out at some point. I think they would just choose.

[50:52] Matt: Yeah, you want out. Also, in this Atlantic article that spent a day with that tech bro, Brian Johnson, his biggest fear was driving.

[51:04] Rory: He can’t control it.

[51:06] Matt: Yeah, because he’s not ignorant to the irony of an accidental death.

[51:11] Rory: Yeah. And he knows we’ll all be deriving lessons from it.

[51:17] Matt: Exactly. Thou shalt not be arrogant in the face to think thou can beat death.

[51:25] Rory: Yeah. I don’t think you want to make your life an obsession about anything, really. And that is just such a weird for him, the whole content. It’s actually kind of interesting because let’s imagine there was a pill that made you freeze aging and live forever right where you are. So he starts taking it the ozempic of death. The entire content of his life and his personality is living forever. What would become of him if all he had to do was pop a pill? You can eat cheeseburgers now and smoke cigarettes.

[52:11] Matt: Yeah.

[52:13] Rory: The odeth pick will take care of it. Yeah.

[52:16] Matt: I mean, speaking of that circle of things like purpose, his life’s purpose would be totally evaporated.

[52:22] Rory: Yes.

[52:23] Matt: I guess he could become obsessed with something else.

[52:27] Rory: I wonder if he would be able to.

[52:29] Matt: Maybe miniatures.

[52:34] Rory: Yeah. Maybe he would become obsessed with, like, de aging. It’s not enough to freeze. He needs to go back.

[52:40] Matt: Also, in my research, I found that the first forms of life, which started billions of years ago likely didn’t die like they are still around and that death emerged during the course of evolution.

[52:56] Rory: Being Joe Biden.

[52:59] Matt: Death emerged, course of evolution because it conferred an advantage. In short, species that died fared better than those that didn’t.

[53:14] Rory: Really?

[53:15] Matt: Which is interesting, like, get rid of the aged. You give us nothing. You bring nothing to this world.

[53:24] Rory: Get rid of the. That’s very strange to think about because death is such a fundamental. It’s really weird to think of it as an option. I thought it was part of the game. So how would that even work? Everything keeps living. Do they reproduce still?

[53:44] Matt: That I don’t know. Obviously, we’re talking about these very simple life forms that have never died.

[53:52] Rory: Yeah, they reproduce by splitting, don’t they? Must be a little bit later than the single cell.

[54:01] Matt: I don’t know if we’re a little later. This is from New Scientist magazine. The timeline evolution of life.

[54:08] Rory: Because the thing about an amoeba that splits through mitosis is that the two amoebas that yield from that, are they new? Are they old? Have they died? Have they just been born? It’s a little unclear how we categorize that. So if that’s what they’re talking about, I guess that makes sense to me. But I would like to see that article. It’s a little disturbing to me, actually. I prefer to think of mortality as the way of things because then you could say, well, maybe it’s not a good strategy anymore. It sort of validates this person’s way of thinking. Times have changed.

[54:52] Matt: Yeah. I mean, the idea that you can’t die again, as I was saying, such a huge paradigm shift. It’s like, could you even have desire in that world?

[55:01] Rory: A movie that really explores this quite well is interview with the vampire. I feel like it really viscerally captures eternal life.

[55:10] Matt: Yeah. And many of the characters were miserable with it.

[55:15] Rory: Yeah.

[55:16] Matt: And some were fine with it.

[55:19] Rory: They kind of go through phases. Sometimes you make a discovery that can rejuvenate your love of life. You fall in love, something.

[55:33] Matt: Yeah. And none of them chose to die, although some of them do die.

[55:38] Rory: Some of them do die. No, none of them choose to, for some reason. I really want to watch that again. I love that movie.

[55:47] Matt: When was the last time you’ve seen it?

[55:49] Rory: I think we watched it in them.

[55:52] Matt: That scene, tunnel eating the rats.

[55:56] Rory: No, like they’re in the well. Kirsten Dunst and her rising.

[56:04] Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Her fake mother.

[56:07] Rory: Her fake mother.

[56:08] Matt: Yeah.

[56:09] Rory: Was younger than she.

[56:11] Matt: Yeah. I just think that the internal understanding of the finite is the undercurrent of all of our relations to the world. And to do away with that, I do not want to do that. I don’t want a paradigm shift. I’m good.

[56:29] Rory: Yeah, I’m good with this paradigm, too. I think it’s nice that we’re starting to live till 100. I think it always felt like that’s where we should be.

[56:40] Matt: A nice round number. Yeah.

[56:42] Rory: It always felt like 70, 80 was like, we’re falling short of like 100. Should be 180. No, 100.

[56:55] Matt: Yeah. How dedicated are you to living a long life? I guess sort of dedicated. You quit smoking.

[57:03] Rory: Yeah, I did not want to die, so I quit smoking. I’m scared of disease.

[57:10] Matt: You are scared of disease? I mean, we all are, but I.

[57:14] Rory: Have, like, a thing about it maybe.

[57:16] Matt: You have a thing about it. Yeah. Especially certain diseases, like cancer.

[57:21] Rory: Yeah.

[57:22] Matt: I’d say you’re a little more scared of cancer than the average bear.

[57:25] Rory: Really?

[57:27] Matt: Yeah, I think so.

[57:28] Rory: Interesting.

[57:29] Matt: Have been at certain points in your life, I think that fear has been tampered since you quit smoking.

[57:36] Rory: Yes. I was constantly triggering that fear. Every cigarette trigger, trigger, trigger.

[57:42] Matt: Yeah. I just don’t think I’m going to get cancer, and then I will get cancer. God, I shouldn’t have said that thought out loud.

[57:49] Rory: God, please disregard this podcast. Disregard it. Nothing here for you. Yeah. When I go to yoga, I’m thinking about aging. I want to be spry, I want to be healthy, and I want to go the distance for sure. But no, I’m not putting too much effort into it. And I feel like I live a somewhat green zone, blue zone life. I eat a lot of vegetables, I walk a lot, I go to church. I have little interactions. So I think maybe if I didn’t do those things, then I would feel a little more stressed out.

[58:42] Matt: Yeah, I agree. I think I live a mostly healthy lifestyle. I wish gentle movement more movement is like the incorporation. I need. I need to do that more.

[58:55] Rory: Yeah.

[58:57] Matt: I wish I could be one of those people for which I believed every stair counted. I know, but I don’t think they do.

[59:03] Rory: I know. My school is just too many stairs. It’s, like, five flights, and a lot of people walk it.

[59:11] Matt: Oh, okay. But you take the elevator.

[59:14] Rory: I always take the elevator.

[59:16] Matt: You have to go from floor one to floor five.

[59:18] Rory: Yeah. No, floor zero to floor three. It’s four floors.

[59:23] Matt: I know the people who one time was with my boss somewhere, and she was like, you want to take the elevator up or walk? And then someone else, like, we can walk seven flights.

[59:33] Rory: Terrible.

[59:35] Matt: Main reasons why I don’t like the stairs, too, is I’ve become, like, the older I get. Actually, it’s just new for me this year. I never want to sweat anymore. I never want to feel hot.

[59:46] Rory: We don’t have that luxury in this part of the world.

[59:49] Matt: Well, what about where I live?

[59:51] Rory: What’s it like there in the summer?

[59:53] Matt: Hot.

[59:54] Rory: Hot.

[59:55] Matt: I’m in a bad mood about it. I get really angry. I need to work on that. Not blue zone.

[01:00:00] Rory: Well, did they talk about climate? Did they in the dock?

[01:00:06] Matt: I don’t think so. No. They talked about, like, globalization more. Anyway. Well, Matt, is longevity how to be.

[01:00:16] Rory: In jewish tradition, you say, till 120 on someone’s birthday. We want everyone to live to 120. That’s how old Moses was when he died.

[01:00:26] Matt: Okay.

[01:00:28] Rory: I think longevity is the way to be, but not if you have to sacrifice quality to get it. Actually, you know what? I want to say something that is not a wrap up thought. It’s a different thought, but I think it’s important. All of the blue zone things sound like quality of life things, too.

[01:00:51] Matt: Yeah, absolutely. When I think we say quality, I think what you mean is, like, your life is actually more rich and deep.

[01:00:59] Rory: Yeah. All of the blue bone qualities were, make your life richer. You’re gardening, you’re with family. You have something to believe in. Your life has purpose. So, yes, focus on longevity in a way that makes your life richer. Don’t go to bed with a weird jetpack on your penis because it overheat and burn that thing right off.

[01:01:27] Matt: Oh, my God. Could you imagine? Yeah. I completely agree with you on that. Incorporate some of these lifestyle changes, because it sounds like a nice life if you live a blue zone life.

[01:01:40] Rory: Yeah.

[01:01:42] Matt: But you aren’t going to live forever. No one is.

[01:01:44] Rory: Your hair looks interesting right now.

[01:01:47] Matt: You had a lot of comments on the way I’ve looked this morning when you were in LA, you said to me, I never comment on the way you look. Remember when you said that?

[01:01:57] Rory: Who is this woman with this hair? What’s her name? Riley. Oh, now she’s someone else.

[01:02:06] Matt: It’s because I got bangs everyone and things.

[01:02:10] Rory: Yeah, go back to Riley. I liked her.

[01:02:13] Matt: We moved the bangs out of the way.

[01:02:16] Rory: There she is. There’s my girl.

[01:02:18] Matt: And then you bangs back and what do you think?

[01:02:21] Rory: And now she. I don’t know, Mara.

[01:02:32] Matt: All right, Matt. Well, I’d just like to remind our listeners to like and share.

[01:02:36] Rory: Yeah, share it. Do you think your parents would like listening to it? I’m asking the listener, not you. Roar.

[01:02:43] Matt: That’s the thing is parents seem to like our.

[01:02:46] Rory: So parents like it. Send it to your mom.

[01:02:48] Matt: All right, Matt, it was great chatting with you. Happy to be back up and running.

[01:02:52] Rory: God bless you.

[01:02:53] Matt: God bless. Bye.