Moby (00:00:07):

Hi, Lindsay.

Lindsay (00:00:08):

Hi, Moby.

Moby (00:00:09):

Hi, Bagel.

Lindsay (00:00:10):

<in Bagel voice> Hi, Moby

Moby (00:00:10):

<laugh> And welcome to another episode of Moby Pod. And we have a very special guest, my friend Dan Buettner, who invented, well Invented? Who is the creator of the Blue Zones concept,

Lindsay (00:00:25):

Which I'm so excited to talk about. To me, I think the Blue Zones are a game changer in my life, and anyone that I've talked to about it is so fascinated because it's all about science and longevity and history and geography, and it's just so fascinating. So I'm really excited to talk to him. Also, on top of this incredible researcher and journalist, he's also just a badass, so you'll get to learn a little bit about that. Moby's Intimidated,

Moby (00:00:54):

Um, I don't know about Intimidated, but there are people on the planet who, who I, you know, sort of revere. And of course I like Dan a lot as a friend, but it does make me feel kind of inadequate. Like I, I stay home and I watch old episodes of 30 Rock and I work on music, and I play with Bagel and go for a hike. But like, he rides bikes across the Sahara Desert. He rode a bike from Alaska to Patagonia, like a badass. And, and I stayed home and played with synthesizers and went hiking. So, any case, he's a remarkable friend and an inspiration. But in addition to having him on the show, Bagel has picked the winners for the May 4th Live Moby Pod event.

Lindsay (00:01:41):

She went in randomly picked four people with their guests. And so we, we have our guests and we're really excited to meet these new friends.

Moby (00:01:52):

The one thing I'll say, so we had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people send in requests to come. And it makes me sad and makes me feel guilty that we are only able to pick four people out of 5, 6, 700 people who wanted to come. And I will say, we're going to be recording it and filming it, so we'll, it'll be available to both listen to and watch for free, uh, at some point, probably a week or two after the event. So, for everyone who entered, thank you so much. I'm sorry that we could only pick four people in their plus ones, but the theater is as tiny as a theater has ever been. I mean, the theater's basically like a big comfy living room.

Lindsay (00:02:33):

That's very, very true. It did make us feel really good to see all of those submissions and to see all of your facts and all of the fun things that you had to say. And it just made us feel really loved. Our little Moby Pod community showing up.

Moby (00:02:50):

And at some point we are gonna have to go through all the interesting facts and maybe devote an entire episode to just going through the facts, cuz the facts were really good.

Lindsay (00:02:58):

Mm-hmm. <affirmative> So good.

Moby (00:02:59):

Once again, thank you everyone for entering and the four contest winners will all take pictures and stuff on May 4th. And now let's go talk to Dan Buettner, who is both, I guess he's an intimidating inspiration to me.

Lindsay (00:03:15):

<laugh>. Yay, Dan. Let's go!

Moby (00:03:25):

As mentioned, we are sitting here with the father godfather of the Blue Zones <laugh>. Um, he didn't just invent the concept, he actually created all of the individual Blue Zones. None of these places existed before Dan. And we're gonna talk about Blue Zones, talk about health, but also I'm gonna, why don't I start off with, with my question, my first question.

Lindsay (00:03:51):

Moby has a very important question for you,

Moby (00:03:53):

Which is, when I think of the things that you've done, like say, riding a bike across the Sahara Desert and being tall and handsome, generally, does it bother you that you make the rest of us feel bad about ourselves?

Lindsay (00:04:08):

<laugh> Do you have any guilt around that, that you can get off your chest?

Dan (00:04:10):

Not at all. No, no. You know, I'm <laugh> I mean, you're, you're sort of the, the, uh, the paradigm of cool and hip and I'm, I'm a, I'm the king of beans, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm the guy who's trying to make beans cool.

Moby (00:04:23):

I like beans a lot.

Dan (00:04:24):

And you have great music and cool friends. And my friends are like pinto and <laugh>, garbanzo.

Moby (00:04:31):

But still, I, I find myself like, I have a few friends like you or like let, let's say like Rich Roll. Oh yeah. Um, or I have a friend in Connecticut who knows how to build furniture and I can't help but feel inadequate by comparison. Not in a, not even in a bad way because like, I, I do look for any opportunity to feel bad about myself, <laugh>, but there's certain people like you who just make it so easy cuz you're like, you rode a bike across the Sahara,

Lindsay (00:04:58):

But also you, you've ridden a bike across many long places. Right? If, if your Wikipedia is right,

Dan (00:05:05):

Yes.

Lindsay (00:05:05):

You've done some real cycling in your day.

Dan (00:05:07):

Well, first of all, I love hearing this from arguably the greatest musician, human species has ever produced. But yes, I have, I hold the record for biking from Alaska to Argentina around the world and top to bottom of Africa.

Moby (00:05:18):

Hold on just a second. <laugh>. Um, you, you breezed through that you rode a bike from Alaska to Argentina.

Dan (00:05:27):

That's right. Yeah. It's, it was all downhill.

Moby (00:05:31):

Okay. <laugh> <laugh>. So my aunt and uncle, cuz my uncles from Argentina, when they got married in 1973, they did something that I was so impressed by. They drove from Nebraska to Argentina. And I was like, oh, I was like, "Wow, how impressive." They drove in a car, VW Bug from Nebraska to Argentina that's driving you rode a bike, like just riding a bike from Alaska to Nebraska. <laugh> would be unbelievably impressive. Alaska to Argentina. Wow.

Lindsay (00:06:02):

But why, why? Why would you, why would you wanna do that?

Dan (00:06:06):

I had a mentor in George Plimpton who was a, a, a writer and a participatory journalist. And, um,

Moby (00:06:13):

He also started the Paris Review.

Dan (00:06:14):

Paris Review, that's Editor of Paris. So he is a man of letters, but yet he was a man of action and he just instilled in me this idea of going out, um, instead of just writing about other people and other people's experiences to sort of be the story. So you're, you're both a journalist, but you're also creating the story. So, and I've kind of done that my whole professional life. So

Moby (00:06:38):

I mean, George Plimpton was a legendary, cause I actually got to meet him briefly before he died cuz I, a friend of mine was the publisher of the Paris Review, but George Plimpton, he was legendary for sort of faking stuff. <laugh> like, like meaning, like, he was this erudite writer who started the Paris Review, but he became a football player to write about being a football player. He became a football player. But in your case, like, cause I wanna, but

Dan (00:07:00):

He actually became a football player. You know, he played for the Detroit Lions. He, he, he Wow. Went in their training camp and he talked his way into actually throwing two passes as a football in the NFL and sort of a Walter Mitty-esque kind of way of being able to being a geeky, normal dude writer who could experience it, but exceedingly talented at conveying what they, what the experience is like of doing that. So in a way, my most of what I've done has been, um, extension of that, of that idea of, of, um, doing things that most people wouldn't wanna do, covering the stories along the way, but also somewhat to a certain extent being the story. And a lot of us just, you know, you don't do that sort of stuff for money. You don't make money doing that sort of thing, but, um, you, uh, you become rich in experiences.

Dan (00:07:47):

And I, I'm sure you experienced it too. I remember George, we, we did this celebrity croquet tournament and there's all these millionaires at the time, and nobody was paying attention to the millionaires. You, everybody flocked around George because he was rich in experience and he told a good story. And that had a really powerful impression on my brain. Uh, that's, I wanna do some version of that. And, um, you know, in a way, the record setting rides and I did a series of, uh, expeditions that solved ancient mysteries. And now Blue Zones is really just an evolution of participatory journalism, but with the useful outcome.

Moby (00:08:20):

I do love the constant, like, you've done so many things, there's just this effortless burying of the lead, <laugh> <laugh>. You're like, well, you know, I did, I did some things like solved ancient mysteries. And then like, you solved, what, what, how do you, how do you breeze past solving ancient mysteries?

Lindsay (00:08:37):

It was called Earth Treks, Right?

Dan (00:08:38):

Yeah. That was a company. Yes. Yeah.

Lindsay (00:08:40):

And you, I I, I researched you, you..

Moby (00:08:45):

You might have noticed Lindsay sleeping outside your house last night,

Lindsay (00:08:49):

just, just making sure I was sure.

Moby (00:08:51):

She has, she has envelope clippings of your hair. She, she comes in that night.

Lindsay (00:08:56):

I'll show you later. I'm impressed with myself, but I love the idea of Earth Treks. Do they, does people still do it, or what was it?

Dan (00:09:03):

The idea was to, when the internet was new, was the idea of letting an online audience direct to team of experts to solve mysteries and then harnessing the wisdom of the crowd. There's a really influential book by James Surowiecki who, um, kind of pointed out that the collective opinion of a lot of people harnessed in the right way will produce a way better answer than most individual experts will.

Moby (00:09:28):

He was the economy writer for the New Yorker, right?

Dan (00:09:30):

That's right. Yes. Yes, exactly. But he wrote wisdom of the crowd. And I was very influenced by that. Also, this idea, this was right when, um, HTML was being developed, this idea where you can navigate through the internet in a non-linear way. And I thought maybe you could apply that to a non-fiction environment, i.e. Uh, an area where you're trying to solve a real mystery, gather clues.

Dan (00:09:55):

But anyway, there was a really ripe mystery back in the late 90s, early 2000s. Um, the greatest civilization in the Western Hemisphere were the Maya. They developed very complex system of writing. The concept is zero. They built 24 story temples with no beast of burden. And they've suddenly disappeared in three generations. By about the ninth century, the New York city of the ancient world was gone, and nobody really knew. And these, um, graphers, these people could decipher hieroglyphs, were starting to crack the code reading these cliffs. And there was about, I don't know, 15 archeologists who were trying to answer different facets of this mystery. And I thought, why not bring the wisdom of the crowd and Sue, sort of do a meta exploration of all these archeologists and these, uh, HIG readers rather than them working in their own little pod. Bring 'em all together. And, um, our solution was largely accepted as the answer of why the Mayan civilization was

Lindsay (00:10:54):

What was the solution?

Dan (00:10:55):

Well, in about, um, the, uh, sixth century, the population had grown so huge that they exhausted the carrying capacity of the land. So they ate mostly beans, corn, and squash. But in order to grow their milpas, they had to clear the rainforest. And, uh, once the milpa was planted, it only lasted two or three years. So all of a sudden there are 10 million people in this area that traditionally holds a couple hundred thousand. So the, the land is exhausted, and then, um, wars start breaking out because there's not enough food. And then we know there was this climatic event that traveled from Panama all the way up to, uh, Arizona, where it collapsed the Anasazi civilization and moves 17 miles per generation. And it hit the Maya area at the exact same time as the collapse. So you had overpopulation, you had, um, uh, environmental degradation, you had climate change. And then we know from looking at the skeletons of the elite and the regular people who built all the pyramids, uh, 2% of the population were about a foot tower than the workers. So you had this, this inequality happening too. So in a way, this exploration held a mirror up to America, and many of the same in the world actually. And the many of the same things that, um, confront are, you know, in a certain extent our existence um, collapse, another great hubris ridden society, the ancient Maya.

Lindsay (00:12:22):

Wow.

Moby (00:12:23):

And I believe, um, who were like, the people in the Tigress and the Euphrates were all the

Dan (00:12:28):

Mesopotamians?

Moby (00:12:29):

Yeah. Like one of the earliest, earliest civilizations. I think they had a similar sort of cultural societal collapse for all those reasons as well. Like a couple of bad harvests, some climate change, income inequality, or like wealth disparity. Yeah. And yeah, within, like, it's amazing how quickly civilizations can go away.

Dan (00:12:50):

Yeah. Well, yes. Well, they've lasted, I mean, I mean, they lasted centuries or millennia, but yeah, it can collapse very quickly. And it's usually they forget the disciplines that made them great. Like the ancient Mayans used to stir grain for five years worth of grain. So if they had a few bad years, they life was so good. They quit those disciplines. And, um, it's always a climatic event it seems. A climatic event is always the, the straw that breaks the camel's back, which I think is particularly relevant for today, you know, in our global climate change or whatever you want to call it.

Lindsay (00:13:22):

So you sort, you figured this out on a platform that you created this kind of Mayan mystery solution, and then that turned into the Blue Zones eventually? Or how did that work after that?

Dan (00:13:34):

So, my company Earth Treks, I had a full-time staff of archeologists and scientists and writers and photographers and film, small film crews and video, I mean, I satellite, and

Moby (00:13:45):

This is in the mid 90s?

Dan (00:13:47):

Starting the mid 90s, and I sold it in 2001. And, um, we went on to do about 16 of these quests, we called them. And every twice a year, we tried to find a mystery that was unsolved we could solve. So we took on human origins in Africa and collapsed in the Anasazi civilization. Uh, we followed Marco Polo's path across China to see if he actually really went to China. And we made a strong argument, one that made the Washington Post, in fact, that he didn't even make it, he didn't make it past Turkey, actually. So every year, you know, our business was finding a great mystery. We had about a million followers, or a million subscribers at the time which was a lot. And, um, we were under a certain amount of pressure to find mysteries. And actually it's my brother Nick, who in 1999 stumbled upon a World Health Organization study that showed that the longest disability free life expectancy in the world where people were living the longest without disease were found mostly among women on this cluster violence in Southeast Asia, this place called Okinawa.

Dan (00:14:50):

And I said, "Aha, that's a good mystery." So we did one of these quests there and, uh, you know, these were, I mean, we sort of had to put these together in six months and they're fairly quickly, um, uh, assembled. Um, but my personal interest was spiked, but so did our web traffic and engagement. So when I quit doing the Quest, sold that company, then I went on and, and, um, developed this idea of Blue Zones. Further, I reasoned that if there was a area in Southeast Asia where people are living a long time, there must be pockets of longevity in Europe or Africa maybe, or North America or Latin America. And that's, that's where the idea germinated. So the idea in a sense was to reverse engineer longevity. So 20% of how long we live is our genes. The other 80% is something else.

Dan (00:15:38):

And I knew from doing the Okinawa, there's this, this, this little corner of science called, uh, demography. And there's a small pool of experts who know how to look through population data and find areas around the world where people live statistically longest. So if you know, only 20% of it is genes, if you could find the pockets where people are living the longest and look at the common denominators, you may have enough correlation to be able to harness some insights on what is driving longevity around the world. So that was the idea behind Blue Zones. And we found five areas, took us two and a half years. I was funded by the National Institutes on Aging, and I had an assignment from National Geographic to find, identify these Blue Zones, and then try to distill some insights from these places. That's the idea of Blue Zones.

Lindsay (00:16:29):

One thing I love about the book is that while it's a very scientific subject matter, the way that it's written is very experiential. Like you really feel like you're along for the ride with you, and you've inserted so much of your personality into it. It makes it feel so fun to read. It doesn't feel necessarily like you're absorbing the science in such a fun way. It all comes through,

Moby (00:16:53):

The George Plimpton, Hunter S Thompson.

Lindsay (00:16:54):

Yeah,

New Speaker (00:16:54):

Thank you! Yeah's. That's, that's the biggest compliment you could possibly give me. So at National Geographic, especially, you know, the, the best way to somebody's brain is through their heart. And the best way to somebody's heart is through a story. So once you kind of, I digest it, the science, so, you know, uh, by looking at epidemiology, usually epidemiology, what are the things that are happening? Each of these Blue Zones that seem to explain longevity? Then if you go find characters, i.e. Most of the time a hundred year old people whose life match up with what the whole culture's doing. You don't have to tell the boring science story. All you do is tell the story. The emblematic a hundred year old guy who still stands on his head or the 108 year old woman who you know, still has a garden and um, and is the spiritual leader of her village. And then it's a lot easier to convey the, the, the knowledge I think.

Lindsay (00:17:53):

Yeah. That really comes through. It was so fun to meet all of the people, but then you sum it up in this way where it's like, oh yeah, okay, I was absorbing that all this time. But now you have all of these other books around the Blue Zones. You have cookbooks, you have just,

Dan (00:18:05):

Just a point on the cookbooks. They're not meant to be cookbooks. So the first book, uh, Blue Zones Kitchen, which did very well bestseller book I ever wrote the idea, actually the core of that is we did what's called a meta-analysis. So if you wanna know what a hundred year old ate to live to be a hundred, you have to, uh, know what they were eating their whole lives. So we found 155 dietary surveys done in all five Blue Zones over the last 80 years. So we knew what the population was eating when a, a centenarian a hundred year old living today, it was 20 and when they were 40 and newly retired. And then when you crunch that all, and I have Harvard's Walter will, it helped me with that, um, you start to see a very clear dietary pattern. And we, we ca captured that in the Blue Zone Kitchen.

Dan (00:18:56):

But then once again, I knew in order to get people to read that we went back to all the Blue Zones and, and got recipes from the old ladies. The old ladies. Not always old actually, but the women are the keepers of the food tradition in many respects. That food tradition is hundreds or even thousands of years old. So when you capture their recipes, which is really more a work in anthropology than it is, you know, going in Dan's kitchen or something and this meta-analysis, the package is what I'm way more proud of the things that nobody talks about, which is the meta-analysis than I am in the recipes. But people buy the book for the recipes.

Lindsay (00:19:36):

Well, something that they can bring in very clearly. Yeah. I mean, and also something, I sent you this, but I got really excited to talk about one thing in particular, which is the magical beautiful bean. And I made a song, I made a song called, called Bean Corner <laugh>. Well, and Moby also made a version of the song Bean Corner <laugh>.

Moby (00:19:57):

Yeah. If you might, you might have noticed we are ridiculous. <laugh>

Dan (00:20:02):

In the best way <laugh>

Moby (00:20:10):

<sings and plays guitar>Your feeling down, you need a friend, you can always turn to beans. They're the only friend you'll ever need... humble beans.

Moby (00:20:34):

So I know that you ride your bike all over the place, like from Alaska to Argentina, making people like me feel bad, who stay home and that you're originally from Minnesota. I'd love to know more about like, what was your, your childhood like?

Dan (00:20:48):

I had a very adventuresome dad worked for the Forest Service. He was a teacher. And when other kids went to Disney World for family vacations, we would go into the boundary waters of forest

Moby (00:20:58):

Of like Thief River Falls area?

Dan (00:21:00):

Yeah. And we even north of there. Get the Canadian border. And we'd go for two weeks at a time with the Duluth Pack and a canoe, and we go rely a lot on self-sufficiency. So I, I, I learned at a very early age to be comfortable in the wilderness and, and self-reliant. You know, we grew up lower, lower middle class and, uh, I put myself through school and went to study in Spain my junior year and, uh, af upon graduation when other people do useful and productive things of their life. I went and raced bikes in Spain for a year and then went and lived in Paris and wrote. And, um, my, my bootcamp for writing was living in Paris and covering the sort of, um, literate beat.

Moby (00:21:41):

So you're basically like the plant-based Ernest Hemingway. <laugh>,

Dan (00:21:49):

Yeah. I, I lived very close to where Hemingway lived in rue de Fleurus. de les flore is in, in, um, in Paris for a while. But yeah, he influenced me quite a bit. And then, um, spent eight years doing the ultra long bicycle rides. Wh which that experience, I think if everybody had experience like that, the world would be a better place because you learn a certain empathy. I can't tell you the number of times in parts of rural Africa where, you know, people, their, their total net worth is a hundred dollars and yet they sit in there, share their meal with me, share dinner with me, or they might not have anything but shelter in a pot and a fire, but they'll give it to you. And, um, it's very hard then to come back to America and be prejudice or be judgmental of other people. And, um, so that tho those are really, really valuable times for me and just being a human.

Moby (00:22:39):

So for people who are listening, like Lindsay and I, and almost everyone I know is so intimately familiar with Blue Zones at this point, I mean, in my case from conversations with you, from reading the books, from reading the National Geographic articles, from following you on social media. But insofar as you can, and I don't wanna put you on the spot, sum up, what are the contributing variables, contributing elements that have helped people become these healthy long-lived residents of Blue Zones?

Dan (00:23:10):

Uh, yes. I can make some common denominators in all, in all five Blue Zones. And by the Blue Zones we found one in the Highlands of Sardinia, longest of men, the longest of women, Okinawa, Japan, Ikaria, Greece, eight years longer than Americans with no discernible dementia, which is huge. Nicoya Peninsula of Costa Rica, half the rate of middle-aged mortality. So they're about,

Moby (00:23:32):

And Loma Linda, right?

Dan (00:23:33):

And Loma Linda California among the Seventh Day Adventist. Okay. So those five areas, what do they all have in common? Well, number one, they're eating mostly a whole plant-based diet. They eat very shockingly little meat, um, very little eggs, very little cheese, even very little fish. The, the pillars of every longevity diet in the world are whole grains corns wheat and rice. Greens about 70 kinds of greens, a handful of nuts, tubers like sweet potatoes. That was two thirds of the dietary intake of, uh, okinawan and centenarians in their purple.

Moby (00:24:06):

The purple potato.

Dan (00:24:07):

Yeah. Purple potato emo and then beans. And beans are the cornerstone of every longevity diet in the world. If you're eating about a cup of beans a day, it's probably adding about four years to your life expectancy. Um, beyond food, though, we tend to focus a lot on food. And I know, you know, the runway for most people for health changes through their mouth. So that's why, you know, I often lead with food, but perhaps even more importantly, we know that having a strong sense of purpose, knowing why you wake up in the morning or Ikigai, is worth about eight years of life expectancy. Have having a, a strong loving social pod around you, you don't have to have, you know, 500,000 friends Instagram friends, because

Moby (00:24:49):

That rules me out becuase everybody hates me. <laugh>.

Lindsay (00:24:51):

Oh, come on.

Dan (00:24:51):

Oh, come on.

Moby (00:24:52):

Bagel seems to like me, <laugh>.

Dan (00:24:55):

Um, but having a few, it's, but it is more important than you think. The technical definition of loneliness in America is not having at least three friends you can count on on a bad day. Hmm. That's the litmus test. And if you don't have that, it shaves about eight years off of your life expectancy compared with a equal person who has three to five good friends. So in Blue Zones, everybody, you know, they often are born into what's called a moai. They have sacred daily practices that reduce the stress of everyday living. Ancestor veneration taking a nap, uh, happy hour, uh, prayer seems to work. Um, they put their family first. Uh, they don't exercise, which is disruptive often cuz we tend to think as exercise as the answer to keeping our bodies fit. Hmm. But nobody exercises in blues zone. Nobody's doing CrossFit or nobody has a ecliptical in their basement or pumping iron or doing triathlons. They just,

Moby (00:25:51):

But they move constantly. Yeah.

Dan (00:25:53):

Yeah. Every time they go to work or a friend's house, they're walking, they have a garden out back, which I think is a great longevity strategy. They don't have mechanical conveniences to do all their work. So my team figures are working about, I mean, they're moving every 20 minutes or so, but here is the organizing principle. Here is the big idea in all these Blue Zones. When you see spry a hundred year olds, it's never because they try to live a long time, you don't see pursuing this sort of maniacal pursuit of health. And by the way, the social media is full of these influencers who are hacking your biology and uh, diets and exercise programs and supplements and super foods.

Moby (00:26:32):

You mean I shouldn't be drinking turpentine, urine smoothies? <Laugh> <laugh>.

Dan (00:26:36):

Well, if you enjoy them, <laugh>,

Moby (00:26:38):

<laugh>,

Dan (00:26:40):

But the big insight is health and and longevity are not pursued in Blue Zones. It ensues and it ensues for having sh having the right environment. These people don't have better genes. They don't have grip better, greater discipline. They don't have a better sense of individual responsibility, which politicians are shaking their finger at us all the time to do in America. They simply live in areas where the healthy choice, uh, eating beans is cheaper, uh, more accessible and more delicious than eating a burger, for example so people eat beans. Um, it's easier to walk than is to drive the possibility of of imploding into your home and sitting on your phone for 12 hours doesn't exist cuz it's, first of all, you're in the streets most of the time and if you don't show up to church or the festival or somebody hasn't seen you for a while, somebody's pounding on your door to get you out there.

Dan (00:27:33):

Um, and purpose comes with mother's milk there, you know, in America, uh, we live in this almost sort of existential community of, you know, what are we, what are we here? Especially males, you know, young males, it's like they're, I think they're lost as a generation in Ikaria for example. You are imbued as a young man that you are first an Ikarian your responsibility is to keep the culture alive and take care of the elders. You don't have to think about it. And, um, in a way that's a gift because people have purpose, they know why they wake up, they're more likely to stay fit, they're more likely to take their medicines, they're more likely to stay mentally engaged. And this is a very different way at looking at longevity compared to the Silicon Valley biohacking with metformin and resveratrol and testosterone therapy. It's almost diametrically opposed.

Moby (00:28:25):

What's also interesting, just as an aside there, cuz you're right, like I went to this event a few years ago at Norman Leer's house, and granted Norman Leer is 180 years old or whatever, it's, but, but it was about life extension. And this was so fascinating. There were some Nobel laureates there, um, Sergey from Google was there, there were all these super fancy people there and everyone talking about life extension. And I hopefully channeled a little bit of the Blue Zones. And I raised my hand and I said, what about a whole food plant-based diet and being outside and having a sense of purpose and spending time with people you care about? And I was kind of looked at

Dan (00:29:09):

Like, you're a communist <laugh>.

Moby (00:29:10):

And, and, and what was so interesting later, one of the Nobel laureate to shall remain nameless, she was wonderful. We were talking and she said, yeah. She said, you are right. She said, that is absolutely the way to live longer and have a happier, healthier life. She said, but there's no way to make money from it. Can't sell it. That's right. It was, and, and as opposed to metformin, resveratrol, all these things, like the criteria by which most people assess life extension is how can you monetize it? And what you're describing, you, you can't sell it. Really. And what's especially fascinating, and I'm sorry if I'm really stating the obvious, is when they try and isolate the compounds, you know, when they try and remove antioxidants from plants to sell antioxidants, antioxidants removed from plants are harmful. You know, rates of cancer, if you're taking antioxidant supplements can go up as opposed to embedded within the plant. It will be miraculous in terms of like life extension and health giving properties. So like, the more they try and isolate these chemical properties, the worse it is. So you, you, you to the, to the extent where you largely can't do it, I don't know if you've found that to be the case as well in your research.

Dan (00:30:23):

Well, I, I and

Moby (00:30:24):

Sorry if that was a completely rambling leading question.

Dan (00:30:27):

No, that, that was actually brilliant. The

Moby (00:30:29):

Go on. No, go back to me being brilliant. I like that part.

Dan (00:30:31):

Well, you are brilliant and I feel like I'm bathing in, in the rich sunlight of Moby's intelligence right now. And, and it's enriching me, so

Lindsay (00:30:41):

I'm gonna be hearing about this for months

Dan (00:30:43):

To come.

Moby (00:30:43):

Like suddenly it's like 30 years from now, <old man voice> "Remember when Dan said <laugh>,I was radiant brilliant sun?"

Dan (00:30:52):

Uh, so when you eat a strawberry, for example, it's got vitamin C and antioxidant, but it's, um, that antioxidant, that vitamin C is wrapped in a protein and you eat it, you chew it, it goes in your stomach. And if that was just a yeah, antioxidant, it'd be oxidized by the time it hit your stomach. But that sort of encasing allows it to enter your bloodstream and get subcellular in a way that taking a tablet or a chewable is just not going, not gonna happen. But more, more important than that, there is this whole constellation of micro chemicals. Apple, for example, probably has 1500 different chemicals that we don't, they're so traced, but we don't know which ones of those fuel the microbiome or have some other biological, uh, impact. We know if we're looking at populations that live statistically longest, they're eating the whole food. they're not taking any supplements or super foods or trying to break. And these tend to be very cheap peasant foods. And for as boring it as it is, and for as crappy business model, it creates eating beans solves a lot of problems.

Moby (00:32:00):

Can I tell you a funny beans story

Dan (00:32:02):

By all means

Moby (00:32:05):

Maybe it's not even funny. So as a vegan animal rights activist, I applaud the development of alternative proteins. You know, we call like clean meats, you know, even impossible burger Beyond, like I, I applaud anything that leads people away from eating meat and dairy. But I was doing an interview for a documentary about the, we'll call it like the, the new protein revolution. And I'm not gonna criticize the new protein revolution, but at one point I said, what about black beans <laugh>? I was like, they regenerate the soil, they sequester carbon, they're a perfect food. Like, I mean the fiber of the antioxidants, the protein, like you could not build a more perfect food and they cost nothing. And it's just so fascinating. Like, it's the fact that we are spending billions and hundreds of billions of dollars developing these new types of protein when the perfect food already exists.

Lindsay (00:33:00):

They're trying to get food to match culture instead of shifting the culture, to match the food,

Moby (00:33:06):

Which I'm not. And, and, and to be clear, like you're absolutely right and I, I don't criticize that approach because it's the same way. Like if you were to go to, let's say like you grew up in Texas someone you knew in Texas in their fifties or sixties and said, "Hey, stop eating meat, eat beans." They would probably crucify you or run you out of town. But if you say, "Hey,"

Lindsay (00:33:27):

Yeah, they're into firing squads these days down there,

Moby (00:33:29):

If you're like, ""Hey, instead of eating a cow burger, what about this other burger or this burger grown in a lab? They might be like, "Oh, maybe I'll try that." So it's

Lindsay (00:33:37):

They kind of tastes the same and you can still dip it in ranch and have fries with it.

Moby (00:33:40):

But it is so, I mean, granted, we're also the species that will dig three miles under the Gulf of Mexico to dredge up black crude oil rather than take advantage of the sun or the wind. Right. Like, like we, we hate free things that are hard to monetize. Like how can we take that free thing that's hard to monetize and ignore it while create an incredibly complicated Rube Goldberg approach to not fixing it.

Lindsay (00:34:07):

But also part of the thing. And I notice, I see,

Moby (00:34:09):

Sorry for rambling on so much.

Lindsay (00:34:10):

No, I love that. I see a lot of people, uh, posting or part of the conversation often when I talk about moving into a plant-based, um, the Whole Foods diet is people saying it's too expensive. Yeah. I can't afford it. You have to be rich to be a vegan. And what you're saying is you really don't you

Moby (00:34:28):

Last time I

New Speaker (00:34:28):

Can, can I, can I, can I, can I talk about my soup now for a second because I have to like, we <laugh> I have to bring it back to my soup and then I promise I will like, stop talking for a minute, <laugh>. So in addition to inviting you over to talk to us for Moby Pod, I also made a soup Yay. And <laugh>,

Lindsay (00:34:45):

Which is kind of our tradition cuz the first time I met you, Dan, you made, you made us soup. Yeah. So we're having, it's it's tradition.

Moby (00:34:51):

The reciprocal quid pro quo at.

Dan (00:34:53):

Full circle.

Moby (00:34:54):

and my soup, I started making it about 40, 30 some odd years ago. I used to, I was living in an abandoned factory and I was making $2,000 a year. And one of the ways I fed myself was making this soup and it's leaks and scallions and onions and carrots and potatoes and quinoa and black beans and corn served with bread and hot sauce. But I started making it without knowing it was the healthiest thing on the planet because it comes out to about 30 cents a bowl or 40 cents a bowl. Like I could make, I could feed myself on $10 a week. So to your point about whole food, plant-based eating being expensive, it's like, no, when I was living in an abandoned factory, I lived on $10 a week mm-hmm. <affirmative> and I, and I was about as well fed as anyone could be. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>.

Dan (00:35:40):

Well, I hear the same thing. You know, my, my my day job for most of the past 13 years have been working with cities, helping shipping, shifting them towards the whole food, plant-based diet. And I heard over and over, I can't afford to, I can't afford, and people, I think associate eating whole food, plant-based with buying fresh produce, you know, at Whole Foods. I love Whole Foods, but, um, that can be very expensive. But when you have a bean and a grain, it could be beans and corn tortilla or beans and pasta, pasta, fagioli, or beans and rice. When you put those two, you get together, you get a whole protein, all 19 amino acids and most of the fiber you need and all these trees, um, uh, minerals, the copper and magnesium, iron. And I saw three weeks ago at a Costco, a 25 pound bag of beans for $9 and 99 cents <laugh> that could make Moby's soup for the next year. But I mean, it'll feel from everybody could, you know, at those prices. Everybody can afford to be a prepper because, you know,

Moby (00:36:41):

<laugh> And also one last thing about beans that I'm sure you know, that's so amazing. They were excavating a temple in Egypt. They found beans that were 3000 years old. They still sprouted.

Dan (00:36:54):

Wow, I'd love to find those beans.

Moby (00:36:55):

Isn't that amazing? Like so, so not so like they last in terms of being a prepper, like you could have beans for thousands of years and they're still probably gonna be fine as long as they don't get water damaged.

Dan (00:37:06):

Just aside, there's a place, uh, in, uh, Dillon, Colorado called Anasazi Beans. And an archeologist literally found a cache of 1200 year old beans replanted 'em. And from that original plant, they, they now regularly produce beans and for like 10 bucks a pound, you can buy 1200 year old Anasazi beans and Wow. Have 'em in your taco tonight. You know, the true genius, I often say a blue of Blue Zones with the true secret of longevity is they know how to make beans taste delicious. Hmm. When you think of it in America, almost all the culinary genius goes into pork belly or fish or the cheesy dishes. Very few of it. I mean, there's a few restaurants we all love here in la, Lttle Pine and, and Little

Moby (00:37:51):

Little Pine is is closed.

Dan (00:37:53):

We liked <laugh>. Yeah. <laugh>.

Moby (00:37:55):

I, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm actually it, it had a wonderful run. It's gone. Nic from Nic's, you know, Nic Adler, have you ever been to Nic's on Beverly? If you haven't, it's so great. He's Beverly. He's, he's reopening Little Pine, I believe as a vegan Nic's on the east side.

Dan (00:38:09):

Oh, cool. So it's, it's,

Moby (00:38:10):

It's, so when I talk about Little Pine closing, I'm not mourning it, I was just saying like if someone went there, they would just find a Oh empty building.

Dan (00:38:16):

But the new one, it is Easter after all we're time for resurrection <laugh>. Yeah, <laugh>. Um, but um, anyway, the point is, in Blue Zones you have these generations of trial and error because all they could afford and all they had to eat were this cheap peasant food, beans and grains and tubers. It gets to be, you're living in the highlands of Snia and all of a sudden it's uh, January and your garden hasn't grown for three months. What do you have sitting around? You have the beans. They've gotten really good at making beans taste delicious. that's where their genius is. So it's a lot easier to get, it's very hard to talk anybody into eating Boston baked beans or plain old black beans by themselves. But I remember in Ikaria sitting around one afternoon with this lady who did this garbanzo bean pie sounds difficult, but she had very rosemary, which she just picked Rosemary grows all around here like a weed and made this sort of, or savory broth, cooked the beans in a savory broth and then she took onions and chopped up the onions into slices and needed the onions like you would need bread. Hmm. Wow. Squish them and then spread them out over the top. And then she put 'em in a really hot oven, which caramelized the onions and then she stirred 'em into this rich rosemary broth and the result was transcendent. You know, it just took a little bit of culinary effort to make this, you know, this great longevity food taste good. And then you've cracked the code because at the end of the day, I know you two guys, you guys spend your life protecting animal rights and, and, and you care about the environment deeply and you care about your health. That's single digit percentages of America, most Americans don't give a.

Dan (00:40:02):

They want to eat what's good for the, what they care about is their next meal and that tastes good. And we're genetically hardwired to be like that. We're not gonna crack the code of these bigger issues until we figure out how to make whole food plant-based tastes good or we, you know, we, there, there's these, uh, you know, beyond Burger and that sort of thing. I think they crack the code at making plant-based bee tastes pretty good, but it's a hard argument to say it's good for you. Yeah. Uh, I'm not even sure it's that environmentally great. Um, at the end of the day with all the packaging beans on the other hand, as you point out, you know, they fix nitrogen they grown sustainably, they, um, full of fiber. They're low on the food chain, they're easy to grow. That's the answer.

Lindsay (00:40:46):

It seems like what you're doing with the Blue Zones is trying to make the ideology more accessible. And I feel like in these cultures, these recipes are accessible because they've seen them their whole lives. They can go to their mother, their grandmother, their great-grandmother and say, Hey, how do I do that caramelized onion thing again? Yeah. And we don't have that. I always say, and I love my mother, she's a wonderful, beautiful woman, but I didn't know that you could get a bean fresh from the grocery store until I was like 19. I thought it had to come in a can. I thought there was some sort of special thing they did in a factory to make them edible that you couldn't do in your own home. I just had no idea. So, and I think it's a cultural thing and I think that like, like there was a time in the states where that was the fad was get it from a can do it as quickly as possible. We have microwaves now. And that cultural mentality really, really stuck because it was easy and fun to some degree, but now everyone is sick and we don't know how to cook basic food. So I think it's an accessibility issue, making the concept accessible, not just the food. Cuz obviously it's as easy to go buy a bag of beans as it is to go buy a, a hamburger. Right. You know? But it's making the concept accessible, which is I feel like what a lot of what you're trying to do.

Dan (00:42:10):

Yeah. It's working on a number of different fronts. It's the, the books try to give, you know, most the Blue Zones Kitchen books are all very bean forward. probably half of the recipes are, are bean recipes. But the best way to shape culture is to change environment. Um, if I think Winston Churchill said, if you wanna shape culture change, uh, change the environment first and culture will follow. So right now, you know, because of the farm bill, the grains that feed animals are so cheap. Soybeans and corn, they're artificially lowered. So that makes feed lock grain really cheap. And that the therefore, first of all, it produces fattier meats with higher, higher omega six fatty acids, which are inflammatory compared to omega-3 fatty acids.

Lindsay (00:42:55):

What is the farm bill for? Anyone that doesn't know?

Dan (00:42:58):

Farm Bill? You know, it's, it, it dates back to Richard Nixon's Secretary of Agriculture, a guy named Earl Butz. And he was, uh, uh, largely the architect of a, of a, um, scheme which made, uh, these the monoculture grains very cheap corn, soybeans, rice, sugar beets, and, um, because you know, quite legitimately there weren't enough calories to go around. But what's happened is we've over innovated now. So now we have this glut of cheap grains. What happens to that cheap grain? Well part of it is, is used by the food industry, the general mills and the crafts. They unleash their food scientists on it and they make irresistible foods like Doritos with the bliss point and um, candy bars and high fructose corn syrup. And then it's also used as cheap grain to feed cows and pigs and chicken. Um, but we are subsidizing that with our tax dollars. Right. And we're also kind of subsidizing it with the future, by the way we're growing these foods, it's exhausting the soil. So now we have this really cheap junky food that competes with things like beans, don't receive the subsidies or kale or other fresh fruits and vegetables. So in a sense, we're making the unhealthy stuff cheaper and then the healthy stuff and that also impacts how we eat.

Lindsay (00:44:24):

Yeah.

Moby (00:44:24):

Well the subsidies, I mean that's, I put out a book about 15 years ago called Gristle and it was a look at the consequences of meat and dairy production and no one read it because it was very academic. Uh, but when we were doing the book tour, that was the recurring question cost, you know, we keep coming back to this. Like the fact they were like, you know, isn't veganism is elitist and and it's so expensive. I was like, well, it doesn't have to be, but also I, I forget the statistic, but it's basically a family of four going to McDonald's. If none of the food at McDonald's was subsidized, it would cost about $75. Wow. And so one of my life goals is to somehow figure out a way to remove subsidies from things that destroy people's lives. Like that's the, the sick aspect of our political system is we subsidize all these things that kill people that

Lindsay (00:45:18):

Are known to be carcinogenic.

Moby (00:45:19):

Yeah. And it's, it, it's so asinine. I mean, I guess it benefits the pharmaceutical industry benefits mortuaries, it benefits the hospital and like, it, it keeps people sick, it keeps people miserable, but like the fact that we're subsidizing food that kills people, it's so hard to wrap your head around that.

Dan (00:45:39):

Well the farm bill is up for consideration right now. If you now is the time to intervene.

Moby (00:45:44):

Fortunately, I mean like cuz Vilsack is the Secretary of Agriculture. Right? Like unfor, I mean I love Joe Biden. Sorry if that makes anyone mad, but like food policy is not his progressive strong suit. Yeah. And Tom Vilsack from Iowa and when he was a senator, he also made sure that like the farm bill was very un progressive, that they kept the subsidy system exactly as it was. So in, in terms of adventures, uh, do you have anything coming up that's gonna make me feel intimidated and bad about myself?

Dan (00:46:16):

No. <laugh>, if I did I wouldn't tell you. Okay. No. <laugh>,

Moby (00:46:19):

You're like "I'm riding my bike to the International Space Station."

Dan (00:46:25):

Yeah. Uh, I don't think so. I just, my bike for 10 days in Vietnam three weeks ago got kind of a fix my adventure fix there. And, um, I'm thinking I'm, I'm working on a another uh, book right now. I'm looking into healthy life expectancy, sort of new Blue Zones if you will. And, um, it turns out that living a long time is not necessarily the same as maximizing your, the number of years without disease. And there's a new, um, sort of posse of scientists, uh, international and I've tapped into them about identifying pockets around the world where people make it to the oldest age without a chronic disease or any, any significant disability. Um, so I'm interested in what drives that and I'm beginning to work up on a book about that which will take me around the world again.

Moby (00:47:16):

And is there a Blue Zones TV series?

Dan (00:47:21):

There is a Blue Zone TV series. It's coming out in September, but I can't tell you anymore about it right now.

Moby (00:47:28):

Okay.

Lindsay (00:47:29):

That's very exciting.

Dan (00:47:30):

Yeah, I'm pretty sure.

Moby (00:47:31):

Cause I do remember, for what it's worth, about like five or six years ago, I had a friend who worked at one of the big streaming services and she mentioned that like her dream was to help produce a Blue Zones TV series. So I'm glad that it's, it's happening.

Dan (00:47:49):

I am too. I remember you and I talked about it. I guess it was just before the Pandemic about trying to, but then, you know, it's one of these things when whenever I try to make something happen, it rarely turns out, but it's, somebody just came to me and said, we have an idea. What do you think? And over time it just developed and we ended up working on it for a whole year with the big film crew. We have 28 people and, you know, really high end production values and, uh, I, I have, I have moderate hopes for it.

Lindsay (00:48:32):

Okay. Let me ask you this. So you're working on this new book. Do you see any ideas about the Blue Zones potentially shifting? And will these Blue Zones remain Blue Zones forever, do you think?

Dan (00:48:43):

I think all the Blue Zones are disappearing. I'm, I'm sure they are. In fact, as the American food culture takes over, diabetes rates go up and cancer rates go up and heart disease go up and life expectancy plummets. So the, in a way these, these areas with the highest healthy life expectancy are new Blue Zones. I suspect though it's more going to be a policy story with quite not quite as interesting to individuals cuz it's less actionable than the Blue Zones. And I think you're gonna see areas around the world with better education, uh, lower rates of infant mortality, more equity, and probably I think the most important thing, this is a hunch from my happiness work. I did what a book on happiness, it's education of women.

Dan (00:49:27):

When you educate women, you get a much better return than educating men because women are the mothers, educated women tend to have fewer children. Those children tend to be better educated, they're healthier, they grow up to be more productive. They grow up to make better voting decisions. And you get this sort of upward ratcheting of a, of a, of a society. And, you know, I, I don't know a hundred percent, but I sense that I, I usually start out thinking one thing and find another thing. You know, I started Blue Zones hoping to find a compound that explained longevity around the world. There's no pill, there's no, there's no compound. And when I found that, you know, it's beans and purpose <laugh>, it sounds unbelievably boring. There is better, uh, research behind that than there is behind any s statins, for example. And by the way, I, the story you told at the beginning, uh, Moby about you telling the Norman Leer crowd that why not eat a whole food plant-based diet, a meta-analysis last year, huge. They followed about a half a million people for 20 years and found that people who just got about 80% to a whole food plant-based diet, were living 10 to 13 years longer than the standard American eating crowd. There is no pill, there's no supplement, there's no resveratrol, there's nothing even on the scientific horizon that offers anywhere near a decade extra life expectancy than eating the way you guys eat. And about the way we're about to eat here in a

Moby (00:50:53):

<laugh>. Yeah.

Lindsay (00:50:53):

Well, the way Moby Eats, at least I do.

Moby (00:50:55):

Yeah. Lindsay, Lindsay does sort of <laugh> sometimes veer into the world of deep fried vegan.

Lindsay (00:51:02):

I love a, I love a junk food.

Dan (00:51:04):

Well, first of all you're younger and the body's more tolerant when you're younger. But, but secondly too, the do I think a little bit is not gonna hurt you every once in a while. Um, treating yourself and cheating weed over a thousand meals a day, a year rather and. A thousand meals, that'd be <laughs>

Moby (00:51:24):

Makes me think of Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. Remember Mr. Creosote? "Get me a bucket for my fro up"

Dan (00:51:32):

<laugh>

Moby (00:51:33):

<laugh>. Have you seen that?

Lindsay (00:51:34):

No.

Moby (00:51:35):

Oh, he explodes.

Lindsay (00:51:36):

Oh, ew.

Dan (00:51:37):

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Moby (00:51:38):

John Cleese feeds him an exploding mint. That's wafer thin and he explodes. Yeah, no, it's worth watching. Yeah.

Lindsay (00:51:43):

Sounds great.

Dan (00:51:45):

But in Blue Zones, out of the 1100 or so meals they eat in a year, a hundred of them are unhealthy. uh, they're pigging out, but the thousand of them are beans and grains, tubers. And, and I think if, if we can get America to that, you're never gonna get American to pay attention if you tell 'em you they have to eat what They don't want to eat every meal. Yeah. But you say there's permissive Yes. You can treat yourself once in a while. You can eat the fried, the Buffalo cauliflower or whatever it's you like to eat <laugh>.

Moby (00:52:16):

That is, that is Lindsay's.

Lindsay (00:52:18):

That is what I really love.

Moby (00:52:19):

Guilty choice. Yeah. Like, like.

Dan (00:52:20):

basically just channeled that.

Lindsay (00:52:21):

Yeah, he did. Yeah.

Moby (00:52:22):

You could put Intuit it, you could put vegan ranch dressing on rotten garbage in the bottom of a dumpster and Lindsay would be like, "Oh, that's some pretty good looking rotten garbage."

Lindsay (00:52:30):

I'm a bit of a racoon when it comes to that kind of stuff.

Moby (00:52:33):

<laugh> <laugh>. Um, okay, before we go really quickly with all your travels, can you name just a couple of the most beautiful places, the most beautiful things you've seen while you've been traveling?

Dan (00:52:45):

The middle of the Sahara, there's a place called Tamanrasset in the, uh, in nestled in the Hoggar Mountains, tallest mountain range in Africa, but completely devoid of vegetation. But it looks like a forest of, of Devil's Towers. And the people there are the Tuaregs who come into town and sitting on top of these regal camels and they're wrapped in indigo and they, which leeches into their face. And they have these blue, blue fa they're called the blue men. That's a beautiful place. Um, the southernmost tip of Africa. It's not actually Cape Town, it's a place called Cape Agulhas. But from Cape Agulhas to Cape Town, uh, you go along the garden route of, of South Africa and on one side you have this cobalt sea. And the other side you have kind of flower studded, um, African, uh, terrain. Lake Atitlán in Guatemala surrounded by 12 villages named after the 12 apostles. But they're Mayan villages with three volcanoes. And as you circle this, lake... Huxley described it as beyond the permissibly, picturesque, it changes different colors of blue. Uh, and then north of there in the Peten Jungle, the largest rainforest in North America. You have these Mayan cities that nobody's ever heard of, like El Mirador and Akumal with 25 story temples. And howler monkeys hanging out. Those are a couple off the top of my head.

Moby (00:54:07):

Wow. Wow. At some point, man, I love that you're creating these books and this media that is of service to people, but just a book about beauty would be pretty special. Like, cuz what you're describing, like 99.9999999% of the people on the planet will never experience places like this

Dan (00:54:27):

And it's disappearing. Well, a little bit self-serving. I have, um, uh, in ma making this documentary, I took a hundred pages of notes and I produced another Blue Zones book, which is an update of probably 40% more insights. It comes out in September, and I've always had National Geographic photographersand we've probably shot 50,000 frames of centenarians in these Blue Zones. You know, when you do a National Geographic article, it's 15,000 frames and maybe 10 show up in the, so this book has 300, it's a big, beautiful, morph kind of photographic book, the Beauty of the Blue Zones, which comes out in September.

Moby (00:55:05):

Wow. Okay, great. So, so you channel Lindsay with deep fried cauliflower and I tried to ch channeled you with the beauty of the blue zones.

Dan (00:55:13):

There you go,

Lindsay (00:55:13):

<laugh>. That actually really checks out. Yeah. Um, is there anything else that you want to leave any listeners with if places where they can follow you and what they should be checking out that you're doing in addition to the book that's coming out in September?

Dan (00:55:26):

I'm, well, if anybody asks questions, I'm @DanBuettner on Instagram and I answer all questions myself and I try to feed that regularly with, with, uh, Blue Zone's Insights. And, um, I just wrote a book I'm very proud of called the Blue Zone American Kitchen, where I spent 150 hours at NYU with another researcher to articulate an alternate standard American diet as eaten by, uh, largely immigrants 120 years ago, African, Asian, Latin American, and, uh, native American immigrants a hundred years ago. Were eating essentially a Blue Zones diet and this captures that diet. And then a hundred more recipes lived a hundred uniquely American. And, um, I think these cultures have been largely overlooked. There was a, a, um, scientist named Atwater who did dietary surveys 120 years ago. So we actually captured what these people were eating with some precision and brought back their diet and here's these under celebrated people who eating in a way that could save about a half a million American lives a year if we would eat that way.

Moby (00:56:30):

Wow.

Lindsay (00:56:31):

Wow. That's incredible.

Moby (00:56:33):

So I don't know about you guys, but I could talk for the next five hours.

Lindsay (00:56:37):

Same,

Moby (00:56:38):

But at the same time you have to go somewhere fancy and I made soup, which is not fancy, so let's go quickly eat my un fancy soup and then you can go off to wherever. Like if you're gonna go like have, I don't know, like play croquet with Bill Clinton, Or the Dalai Lama for whatever fancy stuff you did.

Dan (00:56:55):

This has been a real joy, you guys.

Lindsay (00:56:56):

Yeah. It's been wonderful having you. Dan,

Dan (00:56:58):

I'm giving you guys an audio hug.

Lindsay (00:56:59):

Aww.

Moby (00:57:09):

Well, Dan has left the building and now it's just.

Lindsay (00:57:11):

Sadly,

Moby (00:57:12):

now it's just you and me in Bagel to bask in his warm glow. I hope he liked the soup and he wasn't just being polite,

Lindsay (00:57:19):

I Gotta say. And I consider myself to be a bit of a soup connoisseur. It was really good soup.

Moby (00:57:25):

Thanks.

Lindsay (00:57:26):

You really crushed that soup. It was a beanie soup, which made me feel really happy after that conversation.

Moby (00:57:30):

Yeah. Well, thank you. I mean, I, I given my issues of self-doubt and sort of low self-esteem, I assume that if I make food and share it with people that it's terrible and they're just being polite because one time I was in a relationship, this was years and years and years ago, <laugh> and I used to make pancakes for my then girlfriend and I which I thought was nice, you know, like I'd make like, be like whole wheat pastry flour with oat bran and either blueberries or chocolate chips. And like, I would make my own vegan milk with either cashews or oats, uh, with organic maple syrup. Like delightful, I thought. Delightful pancakes in our breakup conversation, the coup de grâce, the fatal stab, like the, the the parting shot, she said, "And I never liked your pancakes."

Lindsay (00:58:22):

<gasps>

Moby (00:58:24):

After a couple years of me making pancakes, naively innocently thinking that she liked my pancakes, turns out it was a ruse. I was being lied to the entire time. So now that left me with a little, my, my assumption is that you're just being polite, but still thank you for saying that you and Dan liked my soup.

Lindsay (00:58:44):

Well I can't speak for Dan, but he did say he was delighted by your soup-apalooz.a. I think he said soup-apalooza.

Lindsay (00:58:51):

<laugh>. Um, so yeah, you did a really good soup job. And can I also say whatever hot sauce you put in there was delicious and because Moby's really thoughtful, he also made a little bread pieces with some oil and stuff in there and that was really good. What'd you, what was in that? The olive oil?

Moby (00:59:07):

Just an Ezekiel sprouted bread, with organic olive oil that had been infused with red pepper chili flakes. Uh, organic basil, a tiny little bit of black pepper, garlic powder and sea salt.

Lindsay (00:59:23):

And you just toss it all on that. You stirred it up in that little,

Moby (00:59:25):

You put it in the oil.

Lindsay (00:59:27):

Oh, it's infused inside the oil.

Moby (00:59:28):

I mean, I do it myself.

Lindsay (00:59:30):

Wow.

Moby (00:59:30):

So I add it to the oil and I let it sit for a while. So the oil takes on the flavors of everything. That's by definition the infusing.

Lindsay (00:59:37):

Yeah. Yeah.

Moby (00:59:38):

And it's delicious. If left my own devices, I would eat that for every meal of every day, but then I would, um, probably have a heart attack and die of obesity within the next week.

Lindsay (00:59:50):

Well, I don't know if it would happen that fast, but I'm glad you're watching that for that.

Moby (00:59:53):

I mean, as far as fat goes, it's organic olive oils, so it's very, you know, it's got filled with polyphenols and antioxidants and also the bread is like sprouted organic grains with additional seeds. So it's definitely as, as far as an indulgent, fatty thing is, it's definitely a healthy, indulgent, fatty thing.

Lindsay (01:00:14):

Well, I really liked it.

Moby (01:00:14):

Thanks <laugh>. Um, oh, also just a reiteration thank you to everyone who entered the contest for the live Moby Pod on May 4th. And we'll be seeing four of you out of the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people who entered, we'll be seeing four of you on May 4th and will be filming and recording Moby Pod and also taking lots of photos and possibly even interviewing the four people who won. And once again, it was Bagel randomly picked, didn't you. Yep. That was Bagel <laugh>.

Lindsay (01:00:46):

Uh, so, but actually she did.

Moby (01:00:46):

Yeah. So she randomly picked and we're excited to see the four winners and their guests on May 4th. Um, trying to think what else we should talk about or do we just sort of respectfully, politely say goodbye for now?

Lindsay (01:01:01):

Well, let me say this just a another thank you to Dan Buettner for being great. And if you haven't read The Blue Zones, I highly recommend reading the Blue Zones. It was a game changer for me and hopefully it will be for you too.

Moby (01:01:12):

And if you're not inclined to read at some point it will be on TV. So you can watch I tv, the Blue Zones.

Lindsay (01:01:18):

I did listen to it because I love a book on tape and it was really fun to listen to. So that's also an option for you non-readers out there.

Moby (01:01:26):

So thank you Dan. Thank you to all the people who've entered the Live Moby Pod May 4th contest. And I guess that's everything for now.

Lindsay (01:01:38):

Yeah. Um, thank you for, for listening. If you're still here, you're one of the real ones and I can't thank you enough for being part of our little pod fam.

Moby (01:01:46):

And do you wanna say thanks to?

Lindsay (01:01:48):

Oh yeah. Um, thanks to, uh, Jonathan Nesvadba who edits this podcast and does all the mastering and amazing things for it and music. Um, thank you to Human Content who helps get this podcast out into your ears and into the world.

Moby (01:02:05):

And we will see some of you on May 4th, and everyone else will talk to you in two weeks.

Lindsay (01:02:11):

Bye bye.