Episode Details

From ‘Blue Zones’ branded food to anti-aging peptides, the marketplace is flooded with products promising to help us live longer and better. On this week’s On the Media, a researcher calls into question the data behind some of the most popular ‘longevity science.’ Plus, why Silicon Valley billionaires are obsessed with the end of the world. 

[01:00] A new book titled Morbid: Debunking Modern Longevity Science, out this week, alleges that much of the research underpinning longevity science is hot air. Host Micah Loewinger explores the contours of this heated debate within the field, and speaks with the book’s author, Saul Newman, a research fellow at the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing, about the prevalence of fraudulent 100+ year olds, and his gripes with the popular “Blue Zones” research and the multimillion-dollar business that grew out of it. We also hear from New York Magazine writer Kerry Howley and one of the originators of Blue Zones, demographer Michel Poulain. Plus, the growing grift within the field, and the Silicon Valley tech giants spending millions to try to vanquish death.

[31:39] Micah speaks to Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, co-authors of End Times Fascism And the Fight for the Living World, about a new strain of apocalyptic fascism emerging in Silicon Valley and the White House that rejects the idea of a future on Earth, and how to fight back.
 

Further reading / watching:

• “Demographers at War: Fake centenarians, faulty data, junk science, and contested “blue zones,” by Kerry Howley
• “Supercentenarians and the oldest-old are concentrated into regions with no birth certificates and short lifespans,” by Saul Newman
• “The validity of Blue Zones demography: a response to critiques,” by Steven Austad and Giovanni Pes
• Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones, Netflix

Statement from Dan Buettner, founder of Blue Zones LLC:

The Blue Zones findings are based on more than two decades of demographic and scientific research, with methods and conclusions documented in peer-reviewed literature and examined by independent researchers.

Age validation and record-keeping have already been carefully investigated, and Newman’s theories were explicitly debunked in a recent peer-reviewed article published in The Gerontologist. Presenting conspiracy theories or allegations that have already been disproven as equivalent to a large, well-established body of evidence is misleading to the public.

Email exchange with Dan Buettner:

• FROM OTM: Michel Poulain told us that there is “no proof” that Loma Linda, California is a blue zone because “we don’t have the same possibility of validation of age.” He said that “When I discussed with Dan Buettner, he admitted that he had to i