Debunking the “Life Extension” Industry with Saul Justin Newman
00:01 This is a headgum podcast. Hey there, welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Kanover. Thank you so much for joining me on the show again. As I talked to an amazing thinker and get all those delicious, juicy idea nuggets out of their skulls and into ours. It's over 100 degrees here in Los Angeles today. I'm sweating. I'm also sweating because I just ate some very spicy chips, which I did because it makes me feel alive.
00:50 And I wanted to feel alive because I have a lot of trouble facing death. You know, I think death is the hardest thing to face. as a person. The mind recoils in uncomprehending terror at the very prospect. Right now, you can't even conceive of it, but it's true. You're going to die one day, and I am too. You know what, for the next moment, let's all try to contemplate our coming deaths and the non-existence that awaits us. Yeah, I couldn't do it. I was just thinking about being alive. How about you? You know, because of death, and it's, you know, because of death and our terror of it, we have an endless fascination with people who push the final day off as long as possible
01:29 and those who promise to prevent it. Think about all those breathless news stories that interview the oldest living person or that report on those magical blue zones, places where people live longer than average because they drink a quart of olive oil every day or whatever. Or think of all those supplements that are advertised on podcasts much like this one, just they're hosted by even musselier and even dumber men than me. and they promise to, you know, extend your lifespan on the cellular level, whatever the fuck that means. You know, every Silicon Valley billionaires funding their own little life extension lab,
02:03 full of their own pet scientists who are promising the impossible. Oh, then there are the human guinea pigs like Brian Johnson, who claims to have given himself the penis of a 15-year-old by replacing all of his blood. And, you know, I was trying to write a joke off of that, but sometimes reality is funnier than anything you can come up with, isn't it? Life extension obsession is everywhere, but what if I told you that pretty much all of it is bullshit? And not just the outlandish claims that I've been making fun of in this intro, but even the mainstream claims that are repeated in the popular press. Everything you've heard about the science of how to live longer and treat death is nonsense,
02:41 motivated by our deep fears, our endless gullibility, and, of course, the profit-hungry forces of capitalism. Oh, debunking some bullshit? If you listen to this podcast, I think that might be up your alley, right? Well, today, we have an absolutely incredible guest on the show to do it for us. Dr. Saul Justin Newman is a research fellow at the Oxford Institute of Population Aging. He won an Ig Nobel Prize for showing most claims of extreme human aging are garbage. And most recently, he wrote an incredibly funny and appropriately pissed off book about all the problems at the root of longevity science called morbid debunking modern longevity science.
03:20 I know you're going to love this interview. Before we get to it, I want to remind you that if you want to support the show and all the conversations we bring you every single week, I hope you'll consider supporting us on Patreon. Go to patreon.com slash Adam Conover for five bucks a month. You can join our online community. You get bonus podcast episodes, including our online nonfiction book club where every couple months we read a new work of mind-expanding world-expanding non-fiction. The first book we're reading is Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor's End Times Fascism. They will be joining us for our discussion of the book, exclusively for our Patreon subscribers. We'd love to have you.
04:00 Oh, by the way, we have a Discord, all those other wonderful community features as well. Exclusive posts just for me to you, patreon.com slash Adam Conover. And please check out my new stand-up special Big Divorce Energy out on my YouTube channel, October 23rd. It's very important to me. I spent a couple years on it. I love it so much. And I've loved performing it around the country for all of you guys. And by the way, if you want to see my tour dates,
04:24 head to Adamconover.net slash tour days. And now let's get to this week's interview with Saul Justin Newman. Saul, thank you so much for coming on the show, man. My pleasure. So it's really my pleasure. It's always wonderful to talk to an Australian in Australia. Very excited about it. I'm beside myself.
04:47 I want to jump right into it because the number of scams that you expose in this book, not only are they individually hilarious, but they're sort of hilarious in how many there are. And I want to start with, like, I think the first one is the one I find most surprising. These stories about, you know, the oldest person in the world. You would think that this is a simple matter
05:11 of the Guinness Book of World Records, right? There's an oldest person, that person dies. There's a new oldest person. You would think this would be knowable. and yet, well, you tell me, what's the problem with this kind of measurement? I mean, I usually explain it one way, but I'm going to explain in a different way
05:30 because in the book I talk about the world's oldest dog. And I love, like Bobby, the world's oldest dog is delightful. It's equally delightful to the world's oldest people because he's just as much of a sort of character. And the story is that there's this guy in Portugal who says, I've got the world's oldest dog. I've got all the paperwork. You know, I've got photos of the dog back to 1997.
05:53 Here's my 38-year-old, 30-year-old dog or whatever it is. And Guinness World Records, you know, they'd say they check everything. They buy it and it naturally, like, it explodes because everyone was like, look at this super dog. You know. How old did he claim the dog was? I think he claimed it was 28 or 30 years old. That's pretty old for a dog. It's pretty old for a dog.
06:18 And the weird part of this was, there was this national registry of dogs in Portugal where, you know, he's got a birth certificate. He's got the paperwork. This is what he tells everyone. And the story just completely unravels because I've been investigating the world's oldest people. And every time it turns out that it's just, it's just, you know, bullshit. Or every single time. But the dog, everyone's like, what is wrong with you? Why do you hate this? Why do you hate the world oldest dog? Look at him. He's just like Martin and lying on the floor. What's the problem with him? Yeah. They're like, he eats human food. And they're like, it's really funny because everyone teases me about this for about three months.
07:07 Right. And then there's this world wonder dog scandal. And the wonder dog scandal is that this guy from his reporter digs into it. Because someone notices a one. of the old pictures of the dog doesn't match the new picture of the dog. Like, hold on a second. How has Lassie been on the same show for 40 years?
07:31 Exactly. It's the Lassie switcheroo, right? It's like, yeah, kids, Lassie is the same Lassie. But it's not even, it's like, it's worse than that because the dog's got like sort of white sleeves up to here in the old pictures. And now the dog's completely brown. So it's like,
07:48 that's a great day. No, it's a Chihuahua, what the fuck? Yes. This level is stupid, right? But the best thing about the dog is like,
08:00 everyone's like, but the paperwork is real. And this is the process. This is how you get to be the world's oldest person. Right. You can have the real paperwork and you can be the fake dog. Ah. You can just have someone else's
08:17 paperwork, and this is undetectable, right? If you can just muster up the basic facts about a person's life, and you have their birth certificate, you are there. Right. Especially, I imagine, when you're talking about 100-year-old paperwork, right? Literally, literally is no photo ID. Yeah. It's 2026, and I have a piece of paperwork from 1926, and I'm like, that's me.
08:46 I'm unique. Yeah, exactly. The greatest thing about this is old passports did not have photographs. Mm-hmm. Right? So if you're going through like the Nazi checkpoint near the spot, you just write down what you look like. Yeah. The most basic, basic possible way.
09:03 So if you've got brown hair and green eyes, like you're in, that's it. That's you. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and this is the highest level of, this is the highest level of standard of evidence we have. Right. is old paperwork. And so you get these people who,
09:20 you know, America's oldest man, he was great. He was this guy. He's working in a field, right? And he's like Bobby the dog. Bobby the one, the dog. He's working in a field. His boss says to him, mate, like, you're picking fruit. We're going to pay you, but you need to get a social security number.
09:37 Like, you've got no paperwork, mate. And his name is Charlie Smith. And so the Social Security Administration go out and they find a Charlie Smith. who's 113. And they say, you're 113. And then they immediately lose the paperwork. He's literally picking fruit. He's like, I'm 113.
09:55 While he's out in the field picking fruit. Yeah, he's out. He's like, you know, yeah. And so, but the best thing about Charlie is he goes with it. He's just like, yeah, I'm now 113. I just picture him like throwing off the overalls. Yeah, I'm 113 now. And despite the fact that I lost every piece of paperwork,
10:18 the British guy's 113, he becomes the world's old man. And everyone just goes along with it. You know, he meets the president of the US. He's taken a... The president phones him on his birthday. Which president? I think it's Nixon. Okay.
10:35 Oh, this happened a while ago. All right, got you. Yeah, yeah. This is a while ago. So, but this, I mean, the standards of evidence have not changed, right? the 100-year-old burstifices didn't suddenly get better. Okay. And so this guy is fantastic because they even take him to the launch of the Apollo missions.
10:53 And he, you know, he's making all these wild claims. Like, I owned a honky tonk bar. I shot a preacher in church and they let me go because I'm such a nice guy. He's completely wild. Like, he said he's, I rode with Billy the kid. He's completely out there stuff. And everyone's like, oh, great. What a great story.
11:12 like, we're not going to fact-check this. And so they take him to the Apollo programs and sit him next to Neil Armstrong. And he's like, this is bullshit. They're not going to the moon. You've never been to the moon. He's always been to the moon. He starts, and he starts, like, the guy starts doing this on national TV, and Walter Cronkine is trying to interview him, and he's like, oh, it's all crap.
11:33 Like, this is just what the guy is like. And he makes it through, he goes all the way through as the world's oldest man. And the New York Times have this wonderful sort of, he has his abitur in New York Times. And they're like, he was maybe 137. And that's about the peak skepticism you get. Right. They said maybe he was 137. Yeah.
11:57 That's like 15 plus years older than like the oldest person I've ever heard of. It's so wild, right? But that's it. That's how you, you're, you. develop this whole thing. Because if he had a whole, hang on to that Charlie Smith's 113-year-old paperwork, it's no actual way to disprove him, apart from the fact that, like, you know, you did not arrest the president's assassin body.
12:24 You know, it's kind of, without the wild stories, there's no way to disprove it. And this happens like time and time again. And it's really funny. Right, because we have this sort of belief that, you know, instilled in us, because you know your birthday, you know how old you are. It's like a fact you know about yourself. We sort of act as though that's like, you know, your eyes are blue.
12:47 You look in the mirror and you know how old you are. But for most of human history, I mean, people wouldn't know how old they were. It's like, you know, someone would be like, oh, you were born 13 moons ago or I think when the last time I saw a snake. That was when you were born. Even now, you're always trusting, right? It's not like you get out of the womb and go, one. Yeah. Well, zero, but yes.
13:12 Yeah, yeah, it starts now. You know, you're always sort of, to an extent, trusting people. And I imagine after someone says that they are the oldest person in the world for long enough, it becomes like the wonder dog where if you contradict them, it's like, well, oh, everyone's been saying this guy's the oldest guy in the country for 20 years. You're the bad guy. How dare you run down Bobby the dog? And you can't prove it.
13:37 The burden of proof is high on you, right? Yeah, I can't prove it. Like, if Bobby the Dog's one paperwork had have been in order, and if he didn't have, like, magical browning himself abilities, you know, I would still be getting teased. Like, Bobby the Wonder Dog is, it's 100% real. Does the Guinness book or anybody else doing these measurements? Like, do they never figure out that this is a category for which you need a lot of skepticism?
14:06 Like, it seems pretty obvious. Yeah, I think they're sort of. of slowly getting there. They know, because they have to rewrite it when it goes wrong. No one else pays attention. 20 years down the track when Charlie Smith turns out to be a salt nonsense. No one pays attention. They only pay attention when it's announced, right? Because that's way more exciting. Man turns out to be 85 as not headline news, right? Guy's 113 is headline news. So you get this repeat process. And they have this sort of moment of funny introspection after Bobby the dog where they said, maybe this isn't a simple.
14:41 You know, like they sort of, they sort of go, we're reassessing how we're going to decide the world's oldest dog. Because it went in very funny places. Bobby, Bobby's owner went, like, he went a little off the rails. He develops this conspiracy that big dog food is out to get him. And that's the basis of why Bobby is not 30 years old. Oh, wow. The guy who claimed to own the oldest dog in the world was a little crazy, you don't say.
15:09 Yeah, I mean, he, you should, I left it out of the book, but the guy who owns the two world's oldest cats is a bit worse, right? Of course he is. Cap people are worse than dog people. What I find fascinating about this is that once you say there's an obvious problem with adjudicating the world's oldest person, right?
15:31 There's a straight line from that to debunking blue zones, which are this incredible pop scientific, like, phenomenon that I've been hearing about for 10 years. So you talk about that in a lot of these places that claim to have a lot of super agers, there's like a systemic problem, right? Tell me what it is. Well, it's like there's a niche. I've talked about a very niche piece of ridiculous data, but it scales extremely well.
16:02 So the basic idea of a blue zone, there is this region where people reach age 100 at a remarkable rate, right? And when I started tugging at this thread, it all fell apart, all the data falls apart at scale, not just individual cases. And I'll talk you through the process of this happening because in Japan there's this peculiar system where the head of the household writes the death and the death certificate. They report the death in the household. So what happens if you're the only person in the household or the whole household dies? Who reports the death? Mm-hmm.
16:39 you just stay in the system as alive. Right. Right. So in 2010, this sort of came to a head this process because demographers of the blue zone has said in 2008, this is the world's best data. In 2010, there was a national respect for the age day coming up. And the sort of municipal government of Tokyo is like,
17:04 well, let's get out the world's oldest man. We'll basically throw him a ticket-take parade. Sorry, Tokyo's oldest man. We'll get Tokyo's oldest man, so 111. So they go around to his house to say, like, we're going to, we're going to throw your parade. And the granddaughter opens the door and sort of lifts at them and, like, he's not here, slams it. And so they're like, okay, a little odd. But her excuse is that he's in Gifu Prefecture 400 kilometers away for the dat.
17:33 Right. So it's a little weird. They keep going around and she keeps like saying to the dog to get out of you. And so after a few days of this, she turns up to the local police station and says, Granddad is fighting everyone off. He's barricaded himself in the room, is fighting the whole family. And the police like, okay, strange domestic disturbance. Let's go and have a look.
17:57 Let's go and see. A hundred and eleven year old man has barricaded himself. 11. He's fighting the whole family. He lives with the extended family in an apartment. And so they're like, okay, let's go out work. And I get there and he's in his apartment and he's been in his apartment dead for 30 years. He is like, he's like, picture the mommy.
18:19 Yeah. He is the mummy. Yeah. But in a regular bed. And there is another relative in a backpack at the sort of the bed. What? In a backpack? Like, yeah, he's got friends.
18:33 He's got friends in the apartment. Like a big backpacker or is a small person? I couldn't find out. I picture Hello Kitty mentally. Right? Oh my God. It said so bleak. People do self-mumify.
18:46 I know that this is a thing that can happen as a function of surface area and body salt or something like that. Exactly. Like you get a memory foam mattress and it's highly absorbent. But this was by this time, I'm like, no, this is completely normal. This is like how you reach 110 because they've been collecting its pension for 30 years. you know, they've been cashing the check. Right. That's why they would, because they would have to report the death and they have an incentive
19:14 not to report the death. Got it. And I imagine there's also this process of like, how do we get rid of a body? Like, what do we do now? How do we get rid of the body? Because then we have to make him dead and then we need a body. Like, the whole thing is kind of crazy. But this was completely normal in the terms of how to reach 110.
19:35 But what happened next was not particularly normal because the, government goes looking for the oldest woman in Tokyo. She turns out to be missing since 1986. You know, the daughter's, this is really human. The daughter's like, no, she's still alive. I refuse to believe she's there. She's just on holidays or something. For 25 years.
19:54 Yeah. 25-year holiday, okay. 25-year holiday. She has not been cashing the pension checks, to be fair. Right? But then they go looking for everyone in Japan who's over 100. and they check 90% of cases and 82% of dead. Like long dead.
20:15 You know, some of these people had to have the American firebomb go through the top of the house in World War II. Wow. So, again, how do you self-report that you've been blown up? And it's just been, right? Oh, sorry, they were literally killed in World War II. Literally killed in World War II. And nobody reports the death.
20:35 Wow. Yeah. Like, how? How would you, you know? So this is, this turns out to be the reason that all these hundred-year-olds are concentrated in Okinawa. Because Okinawa is roughly 400,000 people. And roughly, we don't actually know how many 100,000 people get killed when the Americans who bat. Because by this stage of the law, they're just like, we'll carpet bomb everything, we'll come in later.
20:59 Wow. It's an incredible, incredible number. And if you mapped where there were firebombings across her, out. You explained 80% of the variation in where the 100-year-olds were. Wow. If your town got firebombed, it was full of 100-year-olds. So this was one of the blues lines. Yeah.
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26:16 So say goodbye to that scratched up pair that's done its job. Upgrade today with Zeni. Go to Zenni.com slash podcast and use code Podcast 15 for 15% off your first order, plus free shipping on all U.S. orders over $65. The style sell out, so don't sit on it. That's z-e-n-n-i.com slash podcast. Promo code, podcast 15. So what you're saying is a blue zone, which had been reported as people live abnormally
26:44 long here and we all got to eat fish and drink olive oil because that's what they do in Okinawa or wherever else. What that actually measures is not health. It's a measure of a pension fraud and be like systemically bad record keeping because of something that happened there, like the far end of record-keeping disasters. Yeah, it's like, it's the outlier for which place has the worst records in Japan. Because, you know, this has been pushed as this ideal lifestyle in Okinawa.
27:19 But there had also been this remarkable process where the government of Japan is pretty particular about measuring other things. And so they had measured all of these lifestyle factors, including diet, across the whole country and broken it down by prefecture. There's 47 prefectures and Okinaura is one of them. Now, it's the single poorest. The Blue Zanes' idea was that these people eat lots of sweet potato. Well, they measured per capita sweet potato consumption, and it was the lowest.
27:51 Okay. Every year, it's bottom of it. It's like, we don't eat that. You don't know. You're asking these people, what do you eat? There's no, there's no, like, putting some on the scale. And the guy who wrote the Blue Zone book is like, nah, pretty sure they eat sweet potato. I think it says, here's my book.
28:09 I mean, yeah, it's like, where's your diet? Well, here's a cookbook. It's like, okay. You know, these surveys covered 96% of the households in Japan. And they had the worst BMI every single year. And they didn't just, like, it wasn't just whole of population. It was like, we measured the BMI specifically in the old people, 75-year-old. spent up, born 1900 and before, and they're the worst.
28:33 You get the worst health in Japan, but like a huge margin. And, you know, it got so funny because it's, I compared it to imagine he gave the captain the Titanic eight more goes of driving a boat and he hit an iceberg every time. Because they had these nine behaviors, and it was like every time, it's the bottom of the pack. They said, you know, they go to religious ceremonies all the time. time. O'Conara is 93.4% atheist, right?
29:04 They ain't going to, it's not going to church. It's just like, they said we are, we're not going to church, like, you know, it was, it was amazing, it's really funny because then you,
29:16 you pick this up and you say, well, how do you explain this? You know, this world's largest nutritional survey that you guys have never cited. And they go, you know,
29:26 the blue zone people. The blue zone is people. Tell me the story of the Blue Zone idea and how that gets peddled. You know, who comes up with this and how do they end up mistaking mass bad record keeping for the healthiest population in the world? I mean, part of it is money. Part of it is optimism because, you know, you get this so, is this retired gentleman. He's nice. He's a nice guy.
29:54 He's sort of like, you know, imagine a benevolent grant. father from Belgium, right? This is this guy. And it goes in and he goes to Sardinia, and he finds a few of these, like, basically goes to the hillyest, poorest part of Italy and finds that, oh, there's a hundred-year-olds on the books here. They don't have birth certificates. It's just church records. But, you know, he decides, oh, you know,
30:17 this must be the secret place in all the world. They're just like, Michelito, Michelangelo. I don't know how you say in, but they're just like, they're like, I am a high. believe me. Yeah, exactly. Believe me. Yeah.
30:31 And, you know, here's a person's name, and that's me. Uh-huh. So he sort of bumbles into this and gets 14, I think it's 14 records. And he decides, this is really funny. He instantly decides he knows the secret to why there are these 100-year-olds living in the hills of something. He bypasses all of the normal processes of medicine. And he says, well, the secret to reaching extreme age here is either one of two things. Mountains, because there's mountains, like, as if there's no other mountains in the world, or is inbreeding.
31:08 It's like sleeping with your cousin is the secret. It's like, okay. This is like one study. It's sort of set to just disappear. And then you get this guy arrive on the scene. Now, this guy has. made his money selling basically like, think Nat Geo, it's aliens kind of documentary. And where he rides around on his bicycle, it's a place.
31:42 And that's what he's done. He sort of finished this off. And he says to in this magazine called The Rake, which I don't know if you know what a Rake is, there's a British way of saying like the guy who sleeps around town and cause a lot of trouble. Yeah. Because, yeah. The Rhapsalian.
31:55 Yeah, the Rapscallion magazine. He goes into the Rapscallian magazine. He says, I need a way to make money of all these people who are baby boomers. You know, and they're not doing recreational drugs anymore. So what am I going to sell them? And he finds out about the blues arms. And he gets some money together. And he effectively, he gets this guy who's bumbled into it.
32:20 And he gets a couple other demographers. And he says to them, if you validate this data on 100 years, year olds, then I will pay you. I'll give you the money if you prove there's a hundred year and they write an article about it and it goes absolutely ballistic. He sort of writes this National Geographic magazine, the places where people forgot to die, you know, it's this wonderful three places far away and it's Okinawa where the bombings have happened, is Loma Linda in California, which is really curious.
32:53 and Sardinia. So, you know, you get this enormous business explodes out of this because it's like, do you want to live to 100, do what the 100-year-olds do? And it comes up somehow, the same process that the guy comes up with inbreeding is a reason. Comes up with these reasons people live to earn. Of course, they don't work out when you measure them. But if it becomes a behemoth, you know, he sells just a part of this business to the Loma Melinda sort of nod for profit hospital for 78 million US dollars, a reported 78 million
33:28 US dollars. And that's like a small part of this business. Of the business of what is the business? Just the idea of Blue Zone? It's just the idea, right? It's not one part of this business that's really kicked off is they're selling certificates to become a Blue Zone. Okay.
33:47 Okay, how does that work? You know, to places like there's Brooklyn. right? In Idaho. Des Moines, Idaho is going to be the next Sunday. And he sells these, according to the New York Times, between 3 and 40 million U.S. dollars a certificate. Wow.
34:07 Yeah. For a certificate. It's incredible. And we don't know it because this comes with a subscription and it's covered by an NDA, right? We can't. I'm just going off reports of how much this is. And, you know, he brings in all these scientists and all these scientists, he swear that I don't have any conflicts of interest.
34:30 But, you know, you look at where they're listed and they're listed on like the staff page of the Blue Zones company. Right? Oh, we're independent. It's like, why are you on the staff page if you're independent? And so it just becomes this juggernaut of selling things. They sell, you know, frozen meals. They sell holidays. There's an $800 million resort.
34:58 Jesus. Yeah. And it's all based off this sort of flimsy idea. They're like, oh, far away, everyone lives this idealic lifestyle and reaches 100. And so can you. Far away except Loma Linda, California. Yeah. This is the one that gets interesting.
35:13 Okay. Yeah. Well, all of this has been interesting. But tell me, Loma Linda is not a place I thought it was interesting. I mean, exactly. So if you don't know where this is, this is sort of just out L.A. It's like Bearstone, right? Anyway, I pressured him about, because this guy had, I'll briefly stop and explain.
35:34 When I had first started criticizing this idea, the business owner, Mr. Butte now writes to me, and he says, I like your pluck and statistical prowess, you know, after he's been furiously angry. He says, I will pay you to come with me on a holiday, right? And this is a bit like, you know, come with me into my photographic studio and I'll do some clammy headshots, right? Yeah. It's a bit of a strange, strange request. So come with me on a holiday. I'll pay for everything.
36:06 And you can decide what a blue zone even is. So you can define what a blue zone is. I told him to bugger off, you know. in more colorful Australian terms. And so that's the background. And I said to him, you know, okay, where did you get Loma Linda? Like, where's the data? Because the CDC says this place is not remarkable at all, right?
36:29 They measure this place and they say, well, if we have, you know, the best place in America is 100%. And the worst is 0%. Well, this is somewhere between 27 and 75% for how long you live. Okay. Right. So it's kind of, it's kind of the art type of middle America. And he admits it eventually how he came up with a place. And he said, well, my editor said I had to find one in America.
36:58 Okay. That's it. That's the whole process. And like, keep in mind, he's sold this to the people who lived there for 78 million US dollars. Jesus. And he says, well, I forgot to delisive. It's a blue zone for 20 years. I just forgot. Oh, like silly me.
37:19 And it's on the drive between his house in L.A. and if you go to Las Vegas, you hit this turn, and you look down from the 8-lane freeway, and there it is. So it's like if you take the left turn to Vegas for the weekend, that's the fountain of youth. What's crazy to me about this is that I have heard about blue zones for so long. And the way you're telling the story, it's a transparent scam. Right.
37:51 But yet I swear I have seen it repeated in reputable publications. Because I don't read garbage, Saul. I'm not out here reading Readers Digest, okay? I read good magazines. So I read good books. And I came across Blue Zones many times. So why are so many people swallowing such a silly idea? It's like saying, oh, man, this Trump University sounds like a great school.
38:17 I mean, it's even more so far. than that. And I think the scientist's fault for the same reason everyone else falls for it. And it's very simple. I don't want to die. I would there to be a simple solution of that.
38:34 And if someone's selling me the simple solution, that little part of my brain that governs all the skepticism just so that someone hits an off switch. And it's happened to my remarkable degree. Like he, Mr. Buter, this piece in New York Times about the island that forgot to die. And he, this is only one of
38:55 200-year-olds, he seems to a name anywhere. He names this guy, this Greek guy, that's living to 102, even though he'd had a cancer diagnosis. He survives without chemo. And if someone's surviving lung cancer without chemo, you should probably fact-check that. Mm-hmm. Right? Because he doesn't disclose in this piece that he owns the business that's profiting from this idea. But it just sails straight through. And this is a hugely popular piece from the New York Times, even now. Cancer survivors love this, cancer sufferers,
39:27 I should say, love this story that you can cure cancer by moving house. Now, I was involved, there's an investigative reporter from Australia who had my attitude of it's probably bullshit and investigated the guy and instead of being 102 is in these 90s and when you talk to his
39:45 personal doctor, his personal doctor says the guy never had cancer. almost certainly. Right. So the 102-year-old cancer survivor is just some guy. Yeah. Yeah. That's a skeptical part of the brain just turned off, you know.
40:00 Well, and it's just one step away from, like, if I met a guy who, if I met a scientist who was like, I know the secret to eternal youth, I'd be like, I don't know, man. But if the scientist is like, I studied a guy who is real old. and he has a secret to eternal youth. I'm like, oh, okay, well, the scientists studied him. That must be true. I'm not thinking, hey, there could be two liars. You know what I mean?
40:25 Yeah. There could be a liar and a motivated reasoner. Yeah, that's right. I mean, the beauty of the Greek case is just, when I dug into the Greek numbers, it fell apart with sort of spectacular speed because they had gone through this process, right? This is one of the instances where the paperwork looks completely. real, and often is completely real. But in the global financial crisis, Greece just went broke.
40:52 They're like, well, we've got no money. Pay them, bail us out. And Europe were like, we'll bail you out, but there's conditions. And so one of the conditions that they check out the public finances, and they had more than 9,000, 100-year-olds on the pension books. They were paying every month. And they said, well, you've got to check those. And so they checked them, they checked the paperwork, and they found three.
41:16 321 errors out of more than 9,000. But then they had this German finance minister, very German, said, you must go back and check every single one of them, or you are not getting a single cent. And when they go back and they just say, look, you just have to prove you're alive somehow. You just got to turn up to the post office and say you're alive. At least 72% were collecting the pension from underground.
41:44 Wow. from dead. Dead pensioners. The neighbor's just like, yeah, yeah, he's not here today. Just keep sending me those checks, though. Yeah, he's not here today. I've been collecting his mail for 30 years. Yeah, yeah.
42:01 And the beautiful part is like the island that these guys have put up as the island of longevity is called E. Korea. And it's this like 9,000 people that were on it. And when the communists lost the great civil war, that's where they put. all the communists. So if you're looking for a place that hates the government and believes in like we're going to redistribute wealth, this is the joint. They don't like the government. I see. And the Greek guy, the Greek pension officer, the minister was handing out of pensions. He said that roughly one out of every 50 people in Greece was committing pension fraud at the time.
42:36 Wow. Yeah. And that's the secret. That's the secret to getting to 100. You know what they say about communists is true, I guess. Leach is on the government. No, you make a, it's a really compelling point that like bad record keeping plus motivated reasoning, plus we wanted to be true, right, can equal this. Is this problem endemic in all longevity science? Is there any good part of longevity science? No, no.
43:04 I mean, absolutely not. And the reason is so surprisingly simple, but we're still something a little bit obscure, right? So there's this mathematical process that happens to all of us. And once you reach about age 35, your odds of dying have this constant doubling process. And what do I mean? Well, about every seven or eight years that you get older, your odds of dying double. So. I don't like that at all.
43:36 Yeah, no, nobody likes it. This is relentless. Right. It's really violent. So if you're 40 and you're like, of dying are one in a thousand. By the time you're 48, they're two in a thousand. And then they go four in a thousand, eight and a thousand. Eventually that number gets over 1,000 in one. It gets to 1,000 and 1,000. That's the limit of how long you can live.
43:57 Now imagine you slowed down your biological age by eight years. What does that mean? Right? Because people claim this stuff all the time. Sorry, a guy the other day claimed he was 40 years younger biologically. Let's just say you lower your biological age by age. years, you'll have halved your odds of dying from everything. Right? Think about how profitable that medicine would be. Yeah. Like how insanely, you have a cure for every disease that gets worth with age.
44:29 And if you talk to an old person, that's everything. Yeah. You know, not just what kills you, like erectile dysfunction, hair loss, the whole shebang. Yeah. So if you run a traditional medical, clinical trial, then you'll halve the risk of death from heart disease, right? And you'll make $10 billion from that. And then you'll run it for breast cancer, and you'll make another $10 billion from that. And you just need to run normal demonstrable clinical trials that work over and over again. And you'll become one of the world's
44:58 richest people. You'll win like a dozen Nobel Prizes, and everyone will know who you are. So that's if you just reduce it by eight years. So you're going to ask yourself, well, why are these guys who claim they can reduce your biological age by 10 or 20 years, selling me crap on YouTube. Uh-huh. And not winning Nobel Prizes. And not winning Nobel Prizes.
45:22 Yeah. Because it does not make any sense. Unless, unless it's all bullshit. Well, hold on a second. I want to, I want to, but I want to talk about some anti-aging cures that I've heard of before. I've heard,
45:37 there's a chemical in the skin of red wine grapes that'll make me live longer. This has got to be true. I want to believe that's so bad, Saul. Come on. I love wine. Yeah, everyone who's ever been to a California winery loves this one. Right.
45:54 This is, this is, it's like the fact that going to Sardinia will kill my cancer. It's still not one a year. Yeah. Wow. Getting drunk is good for you? Yeah. Yeah. It's like getting drunk and hanging out with my friends will make me live to 100.
46:08 Like, I just like. I'm talking to a wine drunk boomer. You know, this is really good for... What I'm doing right now is really good for me. That's who I... I'm surprised it hasn't turned into some sort of horrifying smoothie, right? Oh, God. But let me tell you about the guy who comes up with this is wonderful
46:30 because he's Australian like me. And if you want to get a handle on him, he says he grew up in the bush. I actually grew up in the bush. You know, five hours west of Sydney, there's nothing. there. He says, I grew up in the bush. He grew up 10 miles from the Sydney Harbour Bridge, right? In the richest part of the entire country. So he's like, oh yes, I'm very sold on the earth. Anyway, he sort of is working at Harvard, and he develops this idea that this sort of sedimenty stuff in the bottom of your wine glass will make you live to 100. And he goes around
47:07 pitching it on Oprah. And you know, he says this is a miracle molecule. Now, it's interesting what's happening in the background, because in the background, he's paired up with a guy who sells supplements from a car park in Las Vegas. That's his company. Okay. And I would sort of say, you want to make tenure,
47:28 maybe don't hang out in the Las Vegas cat park. But he does anyway. And, you know, he goes on Oprah and this thing goes absolutely ballistic. Yeah. you know, everyone starts ordering this substance called Resveratrol, and he sells it to Glaxo-Smith Klein. You know, so traditionally, for the reason I talk about with this reduction in biological age, nobody in normal sensible medicine will touch this stuff with a barge ball. But Glaxo decide, you know, I'm going to dangle my balls in the bear trap, right? And it naturally goes horribly wrong,
48:05 because they buy this thing for $720 million off the guy. million dollars? Yeah, 720 million dollars, which in today's money is north of a billion. Wow. Yeah, and they pay them retainers and, of course, they start running the actual clinical trots. And after something like 130, they haven't discovered a single use for the stuff. And they closed the business after five years saying this does not do anything. Wow. It's a bit misleading because it does do something.
48:38 it gives you horrifying diary, right? It's like every single clinical trial, people are like, mm-hmm, you know. I mean, I joke about it, but it actually has horrible results because when GlassSat's been supplying shut it down, they shut it down for the reason that they were told this was help people with every disease. So they run it on some people have cancer,
49:04 and they have kidney problems and they die of kidney failure. Oh my God. It kills people? From the diarrhea, right? Because if you get severely dehydrated in your cancer patient, so they had something like 20 people in this thing and two people or three people died. I forget the exact number. Jesus.
49:21 You know, severe complications in other people. Yeah. At which point, the guy from Harvard is called Professor David Sinclair, he just goes, maybe it's slightly less than miraculous. But I don't know. It's not my problem. Yeah, because he sold it already. He's like.
49:34 Because he sold it. He's off yachting around Sardinia, looking at, at the old guys. Yeah. So that's your wine grape solution. And Sinclair goes on and he, it starts this sort of crazy gold rush. Mm-hmm.
49:50 Because everyone sees that this guy's just sold the scum from the bottom of your wine bottle for $720 million. Can I just make an observation, by the way, is that I think part of why this took off is the class halo around red wine. Because it's like, you know, liquor, that's too bad for you. You can tell beer, that's cheap, right? That's for lower classes.
50:16 Red wine, oh, well, that's, fancy people drink that. That's got to be good for you, right? Like, we just have this sort of belief in America that if, you know, someone could do, you know, if it's in a Nancy Myers movie, it's got to be good for you, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's absolutely. It's like the difference. Whiskey has gone through this strange transition
50:43 or it's gone from one end to the other, right? It's now like classy and sophisticated. It used to be a guy in a shack in Scotland who everyone thought like, I'm not going near him. Yeah. You know. I make me whiskey in the bog. I let, I like a boss on fire.
51:01 That it tastes like smoke. That's hitting the kid with a shoe to go and miss me. And now people are like taking tours. I went to the island where they light them off on fire and make those sucks. Yeah, yeah. Precisely. This is the miracle of marketing. This doesn't make you believe any bullshit, right?
51:25 Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, and so Sinclair goes on to success, us to success in one sense. Because he founds just dozens of these companies. And he is lost, by my estimate, $8 billion of other people's money. Hmm. And, you know, one of these lost 99.8% of its value.
51:49 They sold off the office chairs at the end for a few pennies, and they kicked it off the stock exchange. And he just keeps doing it. Can I just ask, this guy, he's a professor at Harvard. You hear a lot of times about these scammers will have a seat at a university. Like the Huberman guy, I forget what university, but he's got like a lab somewhere. He's a podcaster. He sells brain pills, right?
52:12 But, you know, he's got to see. Why does the university put up with having comical scammers? You would think this would hurt the university. Yeah, this is the mystery to me. But you look at the timing of when they gave him tenure. When they sold the $720 million miracle molecule. They're like, you're like, you got to be pretty fucking smart to sell bullshit.
52:37 Yeah. It's $7 billion. All right. Smart than me. I mean, sometimes I just think, like, if you, once 10, you're just moving to the marketing. Yeah. I swear to, you know.
52:49 Yeah. This is. Yes. I mean, one of these things was a clinic in Saudi Arabia to, to, you know, the reason they went there was no regulations, really. And they were saying to women, you can use egg stem cells to extend. your reproductive lifespan. Now, egg stem cells don't exist.
53:09 It's not a thing. Egg stem, yeah. Hold on a second. It's not a thing. I've heard of egg and stem cells. Okay, yeah. That's what they've done. It's like the word masherator.
53:22 Incredible that this is still going. But it seems to be the template for success. And this is why you get this sort of long, comedic, like parade of either people trying to be this sort of level of success or being this level of success, and it's just cursed, so completely stupid.
53:40 They're just being on belief. Well, so these people are selling it to the public, right? Or selling it to somebody else. Let's talk about the billionaires and the tech gurus who, you know, I remember probably 15 years ago reading that Google had started a lab to cure death. They were like, I thought they were, you know,
54:01 selling sneaker ads above, you know, my web search. But no, they're actually going to cure death. I don't think, have they done it yet? Or I forget. Do they cure death yet? Not that I know of. I mean, is that like Google Glass or not? Curing death.
54:16 Yeah, it's like Google Glass. It's worse than Google Glass. Because Google Glass, like, it had some vague prospect. Like, this is a despotopia in future where this thing exists. Yeah. There's no future where these guys were ever going to succeed. Mm-hmm. It doesn't matter that they're all from Harvard or came.
54:34 or Cambridge, because the ecosystem is generating them has people like Professor Sinclair at the top. Yeah. And they don't understand any of the fundamental problems that are going on in aging research because it's not important for them to understand it. They don't need to know. You know, it's like. Because really what they're in the business of is scamming people.
54:56 And in this case, is it just the, like, so are you saying basically what's going on is a place like Google is like, we're going to cure death? and they hire people who just end up being scammers or like Brian Johnson has a bunch of quack doctors bilking him? A lot of these people believe in it. You know, a lot of the, you get a strange mix of people at the front
55:16 who are pushing this like relentlessly. And every three weeks they come up with a new cure for aging that never works. And then you get scientists who are genuinely trying to solve a problem and they don't feel terrible for them because they got no prospect of success. And I think, the interesting part of this is that the billionaires are buying this for the very simple reason
55:38 that they're getting older like everyone else. Yeah. Right? And unlike everything else, they can't buy this. Right? You can't buy your way out of it. You can buy your way out of Oh, but they can try. They can try. Yeah. And this is this is the sort of attitude. You know, you look at who gets hit for funding. And they all want delivery within their lifetime. Right? It's not, this is not, oh, I'm doing this for the benefit of humanity. Like, they might sort of window dress it with this. Wow. The older they are, the more sort of desperate.
56:13 Can you do it in exactly 15? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And it gets to sort of funny levels. You know, David Sinclair, I made a joke that his latest venture has Chrissy Teigen and Pedro Pascal as funders, right? And who's more afraid. of getting old than actors.
56:35 Well, hold on a second. Hold on a second. Hold on. Hold on. Pedro Pascal is a daddy. He became most popular when he got a little older. Right? I know.
56:48 This is the irony. Like, he's going to be getting around the nursing home, Chase and Grant. Like, 100%. He doesn't need to worry. But even he is upset about this. Yeah, he's upset. Well, I like the idea, you know,
57:03 These guys, I love that idea that aging or youth or longevity is the one thing you can't actually buy. And that's why you see them pour money into it is because everything else they can buy. It's relatively cheap for them. You said taxes, right? There's only two sure things in life, death and taxes. Actually, taxes you can get out of quite easily and cheaply. It's cheaper to get out of taxes than it is to pay taxes. But death will, the death's a motherfucker.
57:33 You can't stop it. That doubling is coming for you, right? It's coming for everyone. And this is, there was a hot mic moment a few months. Or maybe it might have been a little over a year ago. You had Xi Jinping, leader of China, and the leader of Russia talking about organ replacement. And then desperately like, oh, yeah, we might be on the brink. Then we can replace our organs.
57:53 We can go forever. They've got even more, you know, well, arguably more power than the billionaires. Yeah. Zijing ping certainly, right? Putin probably can't organize his way out of a bunker right now. But Xi Jinping is truly up there with the President of the United States, one of the most powerful people. There is no higher position to attain for him.
58:17 And what is he talking about in secret? He's talking about, I don't want to die. Effectively. That's effectively what he's saying. Like, I do not want to be aging. He's like, communism didn't work because that shit got Mao. I don't want to die. I mean, he's in a glass case.
58:34 So, you know, you can view. That's a good point. Those guys, after they die, they, and you know what they tend to use their money for is immortality. And if you look, or immortality in the public imagination, you look at Carnegie and all those guys, they, or the leaders who put themselves in state or create a myth around themselves. It is a form of immortality is like the last thing that they go for once they have power, right? Well, I think that, that, that.
59:02 Observation is really interesting because our oldest story is Gilgamesh. It's our oldest story, single oldest recorded story that we have. And the moral of that story involves a powerful leader going and looking for the herb of immortality. And at the end of that search, he realizes the most important thing you can do is leave behind something that benefits others. It's not to eat the herb and live forever. it's you go and do something that helps humanity as a family. Yeah. Right?
59:36 So this is that complete contrast because these guys are just chasing the herb. Yeah. They don't give it. They don't care about us. They do not care about anyone else. And the irony is they could live forever if they acted a bit more like Carnegie, right? The reason you still know who he is is because he actually built things for other people. in a self-interested way.
01:00:02 I've done videos on there. Of course. Of course, in a self-interest rate. He's massively self-interested. Yeah. But I think the stupidity is that, like, even though he's completely selfish, he's still achieving more than the selfish people we have now. Right.
01:00:15 Like we've had a lot sort of net loss in the smartness of selfish people. Right. Carnegie at least, he made a big show of building libraries and, et cetera. Yeah. Yeah. You named me that Elon. Musk library, right? Show me the Elon Musk Park.
01:00:32 Yeah. It's kind of incredible that he has not done. Or Bezos or any of them. They haven't. They could build a community center in every city. I want to go back to something you said about if you could extend people's lifespan by just eight years, right?
01:00:52 It would be such a significant discovery. And one of the things that reminds me of is one of the other things that people have always wanted, and that's like historically scammy, is weight loss, right? I grew up watching, you know, lose, melt pounds, this one pill, melts pounds, blah, blah, blah.
01:01:09 And you know that this doesn't work until someone actually does invent a weight loss drug that does work, the GLP one, right? Or they finally refined it at the point where this stuff does really work. And I know people are like, well, we haven't used it for that long. It works better than anything else ever, right?
01:01:26 It is 10 times more of a miracle than any other drug that's come before. And when I saw what happened when they actually did it, Novo Nordisk became one of the most valuable companies in the world because of one drug. It is like the entire, which country is it, Denmark or the Netherlands? Which one is it? You remember that? It like, it's a small European country. Finland?
01:01:50 I don't know. Fucking, I'm a pretty dumb guy. But my understanding. is like that one company is like most of the GDP of the small country that it comes from, right? And so if any one of these things actually worked or could work, it would be like news on a scale that we cannot fathom. You would not have to sell it. You would have to pitch it on, you would not have to pitch it on YouTube. You wouldn't have to have them targeted ads. Yeah. And what I think is really interesting about GLB and about the even more informative.
01:02:26 case of Viagra, which is. Like, you know, if you want to look at scams through history, this is the scam. Right. Right. And talk about youthfulness, right? I mean... Yeah. Yeah.
01:02:40 I mean, there's a sort of funny connection here where the fountain of youth myth started as a joke about Ponce de Leon, not being able to get it up, right? And that was the joke that he had to go looking for the fountain of youth. But the point being, those discoveries were driven. my curiosity, and by just regular size pushing. Right. It's not, there's no hope that, like, of all the thousands or millions of herb sales for erection cures, none of them worked. Right.
01:03:15 And the discovery that did work did not come from this field of bullshit. Right. And nor did it come from a billionaire going like, I want to fuck, I got a fuck so bad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't like, I don't like a bill. I don't like Gladys anymore. It was supposed to be something else, right? It was a different kind of medication.
01:03:32 It was an intended heart medication. And delightfully, the people in the trial kept coming back to get more, and they wouldn't say initially why. It was like, give me eight more. Give me that. My anniversary's coming up. I need some. Yeah.
01:03:52 Well, and honestly, I think those. you know, ED medications are a wonderful health success story. People need to, sex is a part of life. People need a... Where's the arm? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the fact that it's coming out of curiosity-driven medical research. Yeah.
01:04:12 And not the bullshit factory. And so I make this point, you know, I make the point in the book, because I get to talk about this amazing guy called Dr. Fingy, and he is working in rice. And, you know, I was a plan side. for a long time. And it was really funny because in plants, we understand longevity extremely, extremely well. I used to have this pair of, my boss made this pair of recombinant inbred lines of wheat that basically means like two types of wheat that are only different by one gene.
01:04:42 And one lives 50% longer than the other. And it's like you've got it in your desk draw. So that's a fantastically different perspective to have on longevity. And, you know, I get to talk about Feinue because he did this amazing thing where two and a half billion poor people in the world rely on rice farming. Wow. There's just hundreds of millions of women that have to go into the field and plant the stuff by hand every season. Yeah. And it means they're not in school. They're not, you know, they're not making money for themselves in this backbreak. And the problem is that rice grows once, it basically, you know, produces a heap of rice and then dies. Now, Fengyi made rice that grows, produces rice, the top half dies and the bottom half
01:05:31 is still large. And it keeps coming back up. And he lives 800% longer. Wow. And that is, like, that is incredible. You're talking about 10,000, 12,000 years of history of rice planting. It's just been changed beyond recognition. Wow.
01:05:50 By God who actually understands, like, his longevity research has been more. more effective than billions and billions of dollars spent by these bullshit salesmen. Yeah. And it is going to change, you know, it has the capacity, at least, to change the face of most of Asia and Africa. Is this new this discovery? Yeah, it's new. It is absolutely, he's got something like 120,000 hectares under cultivation right now. And the benefits are amazing.
01:06:20 You know, if you don't have to plow your field every year, there's less soil erosion. Right. You don't have to use as much fertilizer. You don't have to spray as much pesticide. Right. And all the money that would have gone on that bullshit stays in the pocket of the poor people. Yeah.
01:06:34 Right? And there's no yield loss. Anyway, this guy is just, it's incredible. But it's also a sign of, if you put your money into blue sky, sort of original blue sky research, this is what comes out. Right. Not some crazy scheme. You know, there's a crazy scheme in the book where
01:06:53 a guy tries to take, well, he successfully takes the blood of Texas teenagers and sells it to rich bit. Mm-hmm. Right. So, you know, the contrast is just what. Yeah. I also wonder, and maybe we can end on this question, because, yes, it makes you wonder, why don't they spend the money on basic research?
01:07:16 Like, if Google or Elon Musk or the AI folks, right, spent those resources on basic research, who knows what they could discover. There's huge, vast fields of scientific knowledge that could use a couple hundred grand put into them, right? To do some basic research. Who knows what we would discover? But also,
01:07:39 why put so much research into trying to cheat death rather than to accept death? Like, I do understand just, you know, I joked in the intro, I can't face my own death. I actually feel like I've always felt kind of good about, like I've never really had the death fear deeply.
01:08:03 I'm sure it'll be worse as I get older. I'm watching my parents' age is making me confront my mortality, right? But I do kind of, you know, I feel kind of the same way about time as I do about money, which is I want a certain amount. I want enough to live a good life. And then that'll be fine. And I hope, I kind of just hope I die with a smile on my lips, right, without pain. And if I do that and I get to, you know, make some cool shit and have some good sex and eat some good food and go to some cool places, right?
01:08:35 That's kind of all I need. And I'll be like, hey, nice to see you. And I personally believe after you die, you just don't exist. And guess what? It's not so bad to not exist. It's fine to not exist. I didn't exist for a long time. And I didn't have any problems with that, right?
01:08:50 all of my problems, honestly, have come from existing. That's the part that sucks, Saul. That's the part where I'm like, God, when was this going to end? You know? Like, so that's where the pain and suffering is. So, you know, I do have an intuitive understanding that that is the answer, right? And that that is within my grasp. And what do I got to do?
01:09:15 I got to meditate. I got to get right with God, whatever it is for your set of beliefs. right, but it's inner and it's something that's available to all of us. And why do these guys not spend their money on that, you know? Yeah, I mean, it's... Do they not know this? Do they not know?
01:09:32 What are they actually afraid of, right? And often, often people are afraid of this because they haven't... They're afraid of not living, right? You have 80 years to do stuff with. Yeah. You have 80 years, right? And if that's not enough,
01:09:49 The problem is not the span of time. You know, because historically, lifespan has doubled. You know, even if you take out infant mortality was through the roof, it's gone up so substantially. We have the extra time. We're still afraid of the end.
01:10:06 So it's not the end that's the problem. Right? It's really, really interesting. You know, I'm not, I end of the book. I'm not under any illusions. This is going to go wet, this fear of this, completely natural and human. Yeah.
01:10:21 But you gotta do something else. Yeah. I mean, you look at Brian Johnson. Brian Johnson is a case example. I've never seen the man happy. Yeah. He could, this guy, he choose $2 million worth of pills a year. He takes, God knows how many drugs.
01:10:39 He's taking the blood of his son. Is he living? Yeah. Is he living? He has more money than 99.9% of the people on earth. Yeah. He's he having a good time? Yeah.
01:10:50 That is a fundamental problem. You know, I can't imagine. Yeah, I mean, just that idea of, you got to start living. Yeah. You got to start living. Like, what's he not doing, you know? Learn to, learn to fucking paint, dude. He was having a panic attack about, like, oh, I ever slept by an hour.
01:11:13 Like, gives his shit, man. Get outside. And plus, he just got cancer. or something. Like, he's got, he has a disease and he's like, I'm going to take it very seriously and I think I can beat it. Like, dude, you're going to fucking die, man. Like, I think it was really revealing
01:11:29 than when he got sick. Because he has this attitude of, oh, it was my fault. Like, you can't just get sick in his worldview. It's not just like the wet, you know, I got caught in a rainstorm. It's bad luck. He has to assign some purpose.
01:11:47 personal responsibility narrative. And you think about this. You feel pity. You feel pity for that. You feel pity, but you also think, like, how does he view someone with a disability? Right. Does he think it's their fault? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because that's the way he views his own disease.
01:12:02 Mm-hmm. It's pretty messed up. I mean, it's really messed up. And sort of, you can see this working through with all of these guys, especially the RFK junior. He's like, oh, your baby should just punch its way out of COVID. Like, what are you talking? You know, it's just so deranged and so stupid, so lacking in empathy.
01:12:27 Yeah. Well, what do you do, Saul? What do you do to get yourself right with death, you know? And how do you suggest folks do it? Is there any, you know, conclusion you come to in your book about it? No, but I should have talked about Gilgamesh a little more. because, no, seriously. Is that on your deathbed?
01:12:51 You're going to be like, I should have talked about Gilgamesh more. Yeah, that's the one. But it's a wonderful story because, you know, I said aside, he's got a gay buddy, and I think it's hilarious they pulled the whole, oh, that were just roommates thing. But he sees his gay buddy die,
01:13:09 and he gets scared of death and goes on this huge quest to find the immortality herb. And the guy with the immortality herb says, look around you and look at those other. other people. You're the king. Get your shit together and take care of the other people, basically. Because that is where humanity lives.
01:13:27 And they will keep living once you are just gone. So you take care of them. I think that's a great, it's a fantastic bloody message. You should just go and nail that to the door of Google and matter and whoever else. Yeah. This sense of, yes, I'm going to die. Yes, it's inevitable. You know, why not do something for the people who are going to live past me?
01:13:53 You know, I've got my kids running around upstairs stomping. Yeah. That's who I'm going to be looking after. If you don't have kids, like, go and there's people everywhere. Yeah. Find them. Yeah. Yeah.
01:14:05 Go adopt a pit bull, man. Do something, you know. Like, there's... Go adopt a human being. I mean, there's people who need you. There's so much suffering in the world, you know. And it's so self-interested. to focus on your own,
01:14:20 oh, I must exist. You know, solid system. As though the inside of your head is the only universe that exists. And that's all you owe anything to. You owe something to other people. Or you can benefit other people. That's a wonderful message to end on, Saul.
01:14:37 I'm going to leave it there. Folks can pick up a copy of your wonderful book, Morbid, debunking Modern Longevity Science. By the way, I've never had a more thorough debunk on this shit. You debunked the shit out of modern longevity science. Front, backwards, sideways. You left no stone undefunked. If people want to, and by the way, you can only imagine how funny you are as a writer hearing, you know, talk, speaking with you.
01:15:02 If folks want to experience that you can, of course, get a copy at our special bookshop, factually pod.com slash books. So where else can people find the book and find you on the internet if you have a presence there? I hide on the internet. Good. Yeah, sounds like. Elon's going to come for you, man. He's going to die in a bit.
01:15:21 Yeah, I mean, he can grump into the void, yeah. You can just get it on Penguin, MIT, Press, Amazon, just more with debunking modern longevity science. And, yeah, you can be the person and everyone teases about Bobby the dog. Thank you so much for being here, Saul. And I hope you don't die too soon. Yeah.
01:15:45 It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. Well, thank you once again to Saul Justin Newman for coming on the show. If you want to pick up a copy of his book, that URL, once again, factuallypod.com. slash books. Every book you buy from that link supports not just this show, but your local bookstore as well. If you'd like to support the show directly, head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover.
01:16:04 You get bonus podcast episodes. Every episode ad-free. Our online book club, which, by the way, again, we're reading End Times Fascism with Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, incredible book. I've really loved discussing it with all of you guys. Five bucks a month gets you all of that. For $15 a month, I'll read your name of the damn credits. This week I want to, ooh, you got some new people I want to read.
01:16:24 This week I want to thank South Paul Wooskey. Pretty sure that's a furry. I'm pretty sure South Paul Husky's a furry. And you know what? We love furries. We respect furries on factually. Factually furry. This is Friday, actually.
01:16:35 I'm recording this on Friday. We're going to call this factually furry Fridays. From now on, thank you so much, South Paul Husky. Henry Crawford, Melissa, Aaron Stark, Shell, Bidrill, Agent Fee, MF, Dakota Tevis, and Virginia. Beckenbauer. You know what? Let's also thank Rebecca Champa. Thank you so much to all you folks for supporting the show. If you'd like to join them once again, patreon.com, slash Adam Conover. And once again, please check out my stand-up special, big divorce energy. Out on YouTube, October 23rd, I want to thank my producer, Sam Rodman,
01:17:03 Tony Wilson, Mandy Schmidt, my engineer Sam Rogesh, everybody here at Headgun for making the show possible. Thank you so much for listening. We're going to see you next time on Factually. That was a hate gum podcast. That was a hate gum. Gumb podcast.
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