#33: Are the Blue Zones Longevity Hotspots Fake? | Dr. Saul Newman

The Blue Zones built an empire on one promise: copy how the world's oldest people live, and you can join them past 100. Saul Newman, a demographer at the University of Oxford, went looking for those long-lived people in the records. Most of them were not there.

Michael sits down with Newman, author of Morbid: Debunking Modern Longevity Science, to walk through what he found. When Japan audited its citizens listed as over 100, 82 percent were already dead: more than 230,000 people alive only on paper, including Tokyo's oldest man, dead in his room for 30 years while the family collected his pension. Greece's audit caught centenarians drawing pensions from the graveyard. And America's Blue Zone, Loma Linda, was picked after a magazine editor asked its founder to find one; by his own admission, it came from a freeway turnoff on the drive to Las Vegas.

Newman explains why age records break down exactly where longevity legends grow, how bad centenarian data quietly sets your pension and insurance rates, why Silicon Valley keeps buying immortality pitches as old as the first emperor of China, and what actually works if you want a longer, healthier life.

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Two Percent is hosted by Michael Easter. Today's episode was produced by Joey Fischground, Robbie Hiser, Dana Brawer and Julia Nutter. From Kaleidoscope, our executive producers are Mangesh Hattikudur and Kate Osborn and Julia Nutter. From iHeart, our executive producers are Katrina Norvell and Nikki Ettore. Our Head of Video is Maria Paz Mendez Hodes. Our editor is Ryan Mulhern. Our theme music is by the Heater Manager.

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00:00 Cold open
01:24 Where the Blue Zones began
03:00 A magazine article becomes an empire
04:22 The nine behaviors
07:59 Two bad papers drag Saul in
10:04 Why errors explode with age
11:28 Japan audits its centenarians
12:39 Dead 30 years, still on the pension
15:44 Greece checks the graveyard
17:03 Loma Linda, found on a freeway exit
19:02 Costa Rica's paid discovery
20:59 The uncomfortable longevity answer
23:34 Hate mail and the Kremlin
26:46 The Blue Zones founder pushes back
28:17 What bad data costs your pension
30:39 The UN's garbage numbers
32:42 The world's oldest man problem
35:34 Silicon Valley's longevity grift
39:28 The odds double every eight years
42:22 What actually works
45:30 Kick the charlatans out
48:21 Making peace with 80 years
50:22 Outro

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