The Exponential Curve of Aging - Episode 351

And I had this boss who said to me when I was kind of full of myself one day about being the publisher of GQ, he said, you have to think about something. You're sitting in a rented seat and that seat can go away tomorrow. And who are you? So it was like a lightning bolt hit me. And I said to myself, I better get a life.

Hey everyone, I just finished a conversation with Michael Clinton. Michael is a former editor of Esquire magazine, contributor to other magazines. He's really a Renaissance man and he has multiple degrees. He's well-traveled. He's an entrepreneur. He's a marathoner across all 7 continents. He's passionate about longevity. He's passionate about optimizing health and human potential. And as you can imagine, it becomes a very far-ranging conversation. We go down many, many rabbit holes into building longevity communities, into creating new structures for health. It's a really, really fascinating conversation. I hope you enjoy it.

He went from saving hearts as a cardiologist to rewriting the entire aging playbook. Dr. Jeffrey Gladden believes 100 is the new 30, and he's got the science to back it up. This is the Gladden Longevity Podcast.

Michael, welcome to the Gladden Longevity Podcast. It's great to have you here.

So great to be with you. Thanks for inviting me.

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I'm really curious about the book that you've written, the books that you're writing, and this concept of Roar into the Second Half of Life. The title is very catchy, right? Because we tend to think of the second half of life as being slowing down, or most people do. We don't here, but it sounds like we share similar view of, you know, what life after, you know, picking age can look like. Tell me a little bit about how you came to that realization.

Yeah, well, thanks so much. I mean, I like to say that we're living 21st century lives in 20th century constructs and institutions, right? Things that were sort of carried over when life expectancies were 62, let's, let's say, 100 years ago. It all started with sort of a personal epiphany. I was the president and publishing director of Hearst Magazines. I had an incredible career in magazine publishing and it was really terrific. And I was sort of ready to wrap that up and people would say to me, oh, you're going to retire. And I said, well, not really. I mean, I'm going to leave this job, but I'm going to go off and do other things. And actually what I did, I started a master's degree at Columbia just about a year before I was stepping out. So I was sort of getting myself prepared for, you know, a different chapter. But through this process, I started agitating about this a bit. And I realized and found out that there were many, many people like me who were in their 60s who were far from done, had so many ideas about the future, were positive about the future. You know this, that if you're 65 and healthy, you can live to 95, maybe 100, maybe older.

Mm-hmm.

This is a, a huge gift of time for our, this generation that we have, first time ever. So that led me on a path which led to me writing the book Roar and then launching a business and doing the new book, Longevity Nation, et cetera. So yeah, I'm in it. I'm, I'm, I'm in the longevity conversation. I joined the Stanford University Center on Longevity board and I'm, I'm in it. Okay.

Well, good for you. Yeah, no, I think that's great. You know, part of the epiphany that, that I've had is that the first realization is that aging is an exponential decline. Not a linear decline, right? Biologically, it's an exponential challenge, if you will, opportunity. On the other hand, when it comes to, you know, the impact that we make and the opportunities that we have in front of us, it's an exponential curve in the opposite direction, right? You have more opportunities now than you did 20 years ago or even 10 years ago. So the tragedy of life as I see it is when those lines intersect, exponential decline of health versus exponential, you know, enhancement of impact and opportunities. And I think what's exciting to me, and the reason that we focus on living young for a lifetime and making 100 the new 30 and things like that, that you're familiar with, is because it enables us to have that exponential increase in impact and opportunity continue to rise. And so when you think about the investment of time, attention, and resources into optimizing longevity and health and living young and things like this, there has never been a better return on investment. And, you know, I've made some good investments. You've made some good investments, but there's never been a better return on investment than that one. Right. And the other thing about it is that when you, when you actually start to live that curve, it puts us on a trajectory to actually be something that nobody's ever been before, which is both youthful and wise simultaneously. And it enables us to actually up-level or upgrade, if you will, even the human experience. What does it even mean to be human?, right? This is where if we could end up with a 30-year-old body and a 300 or 3,000-year-old mind, it's like, oh my gosh, what an exciting opportunity, right? With all these impact and opportunities. This is why I get so excited about longevity, quite honestly. It's not just about living 50 years longer. It's not about more golf for me. It's about how do we actually step into the fullness of the human experience, right? So anyway, just to let you know. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We are aligned. We're definitely aligned. You know, I think we are the, this generation, I'm big on role modeling. I'm big on the idea that, you know, when I was 30 years old and I looked at a 70-year-old, it was very, very different than today's 70-year-old. You know, when I turned 70, I went and did the 9-day hike to the Everest base camp and ran the Tenzing Hillary Everest Marathon down.

Oh, nice.

And my point was, I mean, that's just my thing. I'm a, I'm a, I'm a adventure marathon runner.

Right.

I always say to people, you know, you don't have to do that. But when I was 30 or 40 or 50, I never saw any 70-year-olds doing that. And so all these people who are living, as you say, these optimized lives, these dynamic lives, are really not just role models for their peers, but really for the next generations.

That's right.

That's what gets me excited, is showing the 40-year-old what 60, 70, 80, 90 can look like. If you have a different set of attitudes and different approach to life. And I think that's the exciting piece of this whole discussion.

Yeah, I agree. I agree with that. You know, I've got kids and I've got grandkids now, and I just got back from Vail. I live here in Texas at 600 feet, but I just got back from Vail mountain biking with my son and my kids and grandkids. And, you know, we climbed from, I don't know, 8,400 feet to 10-5, and then, you know, we're riding these cool trails and looping up there and went to a bike park and all this kind of stuff, right? So I was born in 1954, and, you know, most of my peers are not doing that sort of thing. But the beautiful thing about it is being able to do whatever you want and then demonstrate that to, to the next generations changes their, their complete preconception, if you will, of what aging looks like. It looks like more fun, not less fun.

Yeah, well, you know, it's funny, we're living parallel lives because we just came back from a 22-person family reunion in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which is 7,500 feet.

Yeah.

And we have a family house there. And we were horseback riding and hiking and running and doing all the things with the next generations in the family. And, you know, I was the, I was the ringleader. And so the youngest one in the family is, in the whole family is 16. So, okay. And we shipped him off to Outward Bound about a week later because that's a family tradition. But yeah, yeah, see, you know, I always like to say, you know, when I was growing up, my parents smoked, drank, they had no exercise regimen, we ate ultra-processed foods. You know, that was kind of the culture, right? Today, think about the scenario that you just described, and I just described as the, you know, role models for our families and our kids and and so forth. So yeah, parallel lives here.

Yeah. Well, that's exciting. It's good to meet you. We'll have to have an adventure together here. So you are quite the adventurer. You've gone to 126 different countries and you've been a marathoner on all 7 continents. We have a client actually that just completed all 7 continents last fall, actually in Australia. But you're also a pilot, photographer, you own a vineyard down in Argentina. So this is an interesting life. Tell us a little bit of how you curated this for yourself.

Yeah, no, it's great. I mean, I love to tell the story because it's a life lesson that I learned and I love to pass it on. When I was 39 years old, I had a great job. I was the publisher of GQ magazine, which you can imagine, fun job. I had a great personal life, love life, all the above, but I thought I was the most boring human being on the planet because all I did was work, you know, typical, typical male too, the guys, but, and I had this boss who said to me when I was kind of full of myself one day about being the publisher of GQ, he said, you have to think about something. You're sitting in a rented seat and that seat can go away tomorrow. And who are you? Right. So it was like a lightning bolt hit me. And I said to myself, I better get a life. And when I was 39, 40, I always had this adventure gene in me, as you, as you said, but I wasn't expressing it as well as I should. So I took a flying lesson, I took a race car driving course class, and I went and hiked Kilimanjaro with a bunch of friends to celebrate turning 40. And I was like, this really, this really turns me on, the adventuring side of my personality. And I created, yeah, I created this thing called life layering, which I write about in Roar. And life, life layering is building another identity. So that your identity is not your profession or your partner or your family or your, you know, parenting. Those are all good, but they all, they all change as we live longer, right? The kids go away. Sometimes jobs go away. Sometimes partners go away.

Yeah.

And, you know, what are your, what are your identities? What are your personas? So I started building this muscle And I have, you know, the identities that you rattled off. I can sit there and say I've got lots of things I'm interested in. And the thing I like about this life layering concept is that you can start it at any age. I was just talking to an 82-year-old who said to me, you know, I'm starting a new life layer this year. And I'm like, fantastic. You know, you can start at any age. And the idea is to just build identities that fulfill you and bring you purpose and bring you engagement in the world at large. Especially when you're over 50 and some of these other things begin to have less of an importance in your day-to-day life.

I think it's a beautiful concept, this idea of life layering. There's sort of a— it kind of dovetails in with the concept of neuroplasticity around, you know, who we are or who we think we are or who we think we need to be, quite honestly, right? All those things come into play, but being able to break out of some of those constructs and get down to feeling self-sufficient, if you will, right? Feeling safe in who we are, whether we have a job or we don't have a job, feeling loved and lovable, whether we have a partner or we don't have a partner. All those kinds of things kind of frees us, if you will, to wear many hats, right? So yeah, super cool. I've been thinking about getting a pilot's license actually here recently. And I just bought another motorcycle. I've done a lot of motorcycle trips around Europe and the US and New Zealand, places like this. I love to surf and, you know, mountain bike and snowboard. I'm planning a heli trip this year. And it's just, why not do all this stuff? It's like a giant playground here. It's a beautiful garden planet. Let's go out and see it and enjoy it, right?

Well, it's so funny. Whenever I'm giving talks around the world, literally, and talking to people like yourself and just, but more importantly, groups, and you know this better than anyone, the number one natural medicine is movement. Right, and exercise and being engaged on that front. And once again, I say to people, you don't have to go out and run a marathon in Mongolia, as I did. But you can go out and take a walk around the park, you know, just get out there and build, build that practice. My, you know, my dad, my dad lived to be 92 and a half. Okay, no diseases, no illness, full cognition, great, amazing. I mean, could talk to you about current events and books and anything you wanted. But the last year of his life, he became very sedentary. And I kept saying to his wife, get dad up, get him moving, get him walking, getting, you know, getting, building some strength, some balance. And of course, you know, he fell and because he was atrophied and it was the long slide down. I mean, he could have looked 100, I think, you know, but he stopped moving. And I think that's so critical. I mean, you know that better than anyone. You know, as a doctor.

Yeah, there's no doubt about it. There are things that actually undermine our loss of the ability or even the desire to move, right? And I think this comes down to actually architecting an exponential strategy for an exponential problem. And the way that we've constructed that is to look at longevity itself through 5 different circles or 5 different lenses, if you will. The first one is the Life Energy Circle, which is really the psycho-spiritual space because we know that when the psychospiritual space is healed and healthy and we can live in a stress, a very low stress scenario that we live a lot longer, we age a lot slower and we heal a lot faster and we respond to regenerative therapies a lot better. So that's really the circle that binds everything else together. Then there's longevity itself, which is rarely addressed in longevity clinics, which is actually going after the actual currents in the Niagara River that are carrying us towards the falls. And that's an exponential current, right? So those are the hallmarks of aging that are both expressions or phenotypic expressions of aging, as well as drivers of aging. And then there's health, of course, right? All the organ systems. And then there's performance. How do we stay fast, agile, strong, quick, balanced, et cetera, great mobility, flexibility. And then the third one is environments, which is how do we construct the environments to remove toxins, but how do we also construct them in a way that makes it easy to engage with what it is we want to engage, right? And keep us on track because nobody has discipline at 8 o'clock at night, right? I tell people if I had chocolate ice cream in my freezer at 8 o'clock at night, I'm gonna eat it. So I'm not any different than anybody else. I just don't put it there, right? So it's, uh, it's a, it's those 5 circles and the way that they interface. And, and then out of that, the target is, uh, you know, at age 100, have a 30-year-old body and a 300-year-old mind. But the point is that in order to do that, you've gotta be actually be working in all of those circles from an earlier point in your life to deconstruct them. What are your assets? What are your liabilities? Where are you in the aging process? We're a mosaic of many biological ages. There's someone only as young as our oldest age. So, you know, where do we need to, where do we need to apply leverage? And I think what was missing from my dad, your dad, you know, my mom, et cetera, is they certainly had the desire to live young and they played golf and fished and, you know, did all kinds of stuff, but they never had the actual strategy that it takes to actually make good on the desire that they have. And I think what we have now is we actually have the construct, particularly in conjunction with the systems biology approach and AI and all the other things leveraging to actually, actually make good on the, on the reality and the aspiration that we had.

So, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I have two, two thoughts on that. One is, you know, I'm going to pick on the boomers again, of which you and I are both ones in that as a generation, we were the first generation to sort of stop smoking, start, start eating better, you know, running aerobics, fitness, you know, all of the I always talk about the generational transfer of health versus the generational transfer of wealth because our kids grew up in a household where they were eating better and they were learning about exercise and skiing and, you know, hiking, all kind of stuff. And, you know, that is, that's given this generation a definitely a leg up in their personal longevity journey. The other thing, in writing the book Longevity Nation, I interviewed 70 people around the the world. And the big aha for me was the convergence of medicine, technology, and AI, which is going to manifest— I mean, you know the numbers. The studies say that today's 5-year-old has a 50% chance to live to be 100. And what will lead them to that will be not just lifestyle, as we just discussed, but, you know, the, the amazing amount of diagnostics that are available now and tests and classes of drugs and precision medicine and preventative approach, they're going to create a whole different ecosystem that is, you know, fits, fits into your 5 circles in, in lots of ways.

That's right.

And so I think it's really very, very exciting. Some of us may get to 100, but these next generations, man, they're really going to get there. So, you know, it's normalizing.

Yeah, I think, I think it's exciting to think about because you know, we do have— we're going to have more opportunity and more impact than our parents did, right? Because we're going to stay youthful. And, and I think as the younger generation sees that, I think that they can gravitate towards that. I think, you know, with AI coming in, concepts around job replacement, things like that, it's going to be important for them to find meaning. You and I have a ton of meaning in our lives, right? We have a ton of purpose, a ton of motivation. The question is going to be, I think, to help them, help them find their meaning. I think that's going to be one of our, our jobs as elders in the tribe, so to speak, is to help people through the transition to find meaning and purpose. Because ultimately, if you don't have that, then you stop caring. Right. And so it's important.

I mean, I mean, you know, IRL is the big battle cry these days and, you know, in real life and the experiential economy. One of the things I love around this idea, and you know this, it's always astounding to me, the kids in our family who know the music from the Eagles. I'm like, how do you know that music? That's my music.

That's right.

But you've got all these multigenerational people. My brother's coming up to New York this week and he and his two sons, he has one son who lives in Brooklyn and his other son's in Pittsburgh where we're from and where he lives. And they're all coming up to go to the Rush concert.

Oh, wow.

My brother is 66 and one of the kids is— I'm like, I'm not interested in Rush myself, but you go have a good time because they did invite me. But you hear about whether it's the Rolling Stones or it's the Eagles. I mean, you've got this connection happening with multi-generational, which that's just one example. But it's a good example because it it brings connectivity, relationships around, you know, different subject areas. And so really important stuff.

Yeah, I love that. You know, when you look at the Blue Zones, of course, you see families that are integrated across, you know, generations, right? There's an integration. People are having dinner together. They're— they, they know their grandparents, they know their great-grandparents for that matter. And then back to the idea of physical motion, people are out walking around gardening, you know, and they're eating tons of fresh herbs and things like that. I think One of the big challenges for us is to actually get nutrient-dense food. I think if we could get really high-quality nutrient-dense food, we'd be miles ahead instead of, you know, kind of processed whatever, or even organic food that's lost a lot of nutritional value. So I think, I think it's going to be really interesting. You know, my grandchildren are a bit younger than yours. I've got one that's 15, one that's 12, and then it drops off to 7, 5, 3, and almost 1. And particularly for the little ones, you know, it, I think it's so important to start to nurture their interests and, you know, help them to explore, help them to see that the world's a bigger place than the constructs they live in, things like that. So I love, I love the idea of reaching back across generations. And it is fascinating that for whatever reason, you know, the music that we grew up with is still resonates with, with, you know, people today, right? It's like, like that wasn't true when you and I were growing up. Like we weren't listening to people that played in the '20s, right? We were not listening to that.

Yeah, we were so not interested. You know, I'm just back, I'm just back from Okinawa, which is of course one of the Blue Zones. And, you know, I spent a couple of days in the Blue Zone area, which was fascinating. And what you say is so true in terms of the gardening and the fresh vegetables and the co-ops where people bring what they grow and the community shares it. Yeah, I participated in a 45-minute community movement and exercise class. But the thing that I really— that really resonated with me, that was like, wow, is anyone who is over 80 in the community, the entire community is focused on making sure that they have a human contact every day of their lives. Now, when you think about, you know, how many people are lonely or isolated or don't have support systems, That's pretty phenomenal because they all share in making sure that X person gets an exposure to another human being. Every—

that is—

that was to me one huge— that's you. Yeah.

You know, it's really huge. I will share with you that in my life I had actually struggled with depression, and it wasn't until I did my genetics and figured out why I was predisposed to depression that I was able to solve it. And I was able to get on the right combination of supplements and things like that to where, and also learn to meditate and some other spiritual insights. But I got to a point where I wouldn't get depressed, right? Even if I would come under lots of stress back in the day. And now with my spiritual practices, I don't really experience stress. I kind of live life in flow, if you will.

Yeah.

But, but the interesting thing about that is that there were other times in my life where I've been lonely. And what I take, I take a supplement called SAMe, which is a methyl donor, and it helps me to make dopamine and serotonin because I'm a bit challenged there, right? So when I take it, literally 10 minutes later, I'm not depressed. And I discovered that if I was feeling lonely and I took SAMe, in 10 minutes I wasn't feeling lonely. So there's a massive, there's a massive kind of overlay between depression and loneliness. And we know that people that are depressed or people that are lonely die a lot sooner, right? They don't recover well. They, you know, they don't respond to other, you know, interventions. And so I think one of the greatest things that we can do for ourselves and for each other, quite honestly, is to ensure that we're looking out for each other, whether it's regards to both depression, loneliness, anxiety, all those things kind of play into a similar circle. And have a similar impact on health. So I think it's beautiful that they were doing that in Okinawa, that they were making sure that people were seen. And I think we can probably take that lesson and actually do it better, right? We can, we can understand what are the genetics of this person? What do they actually need from us? What do they need in their diet or things like that to where we can keep them an active part of a valuable and valued part of the community as opposed to a project that we're just trying to take care of.

Yeah, you know, there's also a lot of work. I've been fascinated to read about a lot of work in what I'll call generational trauma. You know, if you, if you come from a family that experienced trauma in a prior generation, even 1, 2, or 3 generations back, that's right. You know, you carry that generational trauma with you into next generations. And that's a hidden, that's a hidden anxiety. So it's really important to understand our family backgrounds and, you know, what kind of— that's right. I come from a poor working-class family. You know, I was the first one to graduate from college and same, you know, there you go. And when you, when I went back and to try and understand my family and the struggles and the, the depression and the poverty and all of that, once you have an understanding of where you come from, that's right. And so many people don't know their family history. You know, it's so interesting. I mean, I've talked to people, say, well, tell me where your family's from. I, I have no idea. And I think it's so important. It's part of the— this, uh, to your point, part of this idea of understanding why we have certain things in us.

That's right. You know, I think there's a couple things that come to mind as you say that. The first is there was a study you're probably familiar with that was done on women in Holland or the Netherlands during the occupation during World War II and all the stress that they were under. And they were looking at the women that were pregnant, and then they looked at the life expectancy of those children because obviously the moms were very stressed and the children grew up in a stressful situation, or it may have even been that they were born after the war. But the point is they had a significantly shorter life expectancy and many more health issues because of the epigenetic programming of trauma into their systems. So that's a big one. And then the other interesting thing is that each of us in our own lives have experienced trauma. And I think one of the interesting things is that we end up living in reaction to that trauma. All of us do. That's the way our nervous systems work, right? It gets imprinted in. And so from my perspective, we become encumbered by that trauma, and it could be a combination of generational and personal. But nonetheless, I think one of the goals of developing the 300-year-old mind is actually to become unencumbered from the trauma, whether it's generational, personal. And that's its own journey to go in, understand that trauma, where it came from, to your point about family history, your own personal history, who was to blame, what did I contribute, all these things, and ultimately be able to forgive everyone involved, including yourself. That becomes super important. And then transcend it to where you become grateful for everything that happened because it made you more human, more empathetic, more loving, more insightful.

Yeah, it completely releases you You know, one of the things— so ROAR, the book, the first book, ROAR is an acronym. And the O stands for, you know, own your numbers, own your shit, own your background, own your baggage, own your all the stuff. Because until you own all of it holistically, you can't move forward.

That's right.

I think what happens is when you're over 50, you do get wisdom and experience, and it is time to sort of release yourself from a lot of things. It's not easy, of course, it's hard. But a part of that that runs parallel to that is the aging process itself. And, you know, we live in a culture that, which I think is changing, very different than Asia, which embraces aging. You know, we live in an ageist culture which creates self-imposed ageism. So people start saying, well, I can't do this because I'm 60, or I can't do that because I'm 70, or I can't do— can't, can't, can't, can't, can't. And it's almost subliminal. It's not even— they don't bring it to the forefront to say, well, why can't you do that? And so I think that adds to depression, anxiety, not accepting that if you're 70 or 80 and you're healthy, that is a blessing. And you should be really shouting it from the rooftops that you're 70. And we're in a culture now where people don't even talk about their age. But I think it's changing because you know this, there are 62 million Americans over the age of 65, and that's going to grow to 80 million in the next decade. The sheer numbers are going to change the conversation. That's right. You know, 100 years ago, there were only 7 million people that were 65 or older. So now let's flex the muscle to say, wait a minute, let's change this script up because, you know, what we were told ain't what's going to be. So, you know, I think this— we're seeing this happen in, in real life now, which is great. It will help the next generations once again. So I think there's that piece too, in terms of embracing aging in a healthy way.

I think it's one of the greatest opportunities to actually change the constructs around chronological age because it's so reinforced. You're at this age, you should be retiring. Oh, you shouldn't do that. Or you shouldn't— no, you can't do that anymore. And it comes through your peers. It comes through your, you know, maybe your employers if you're employed. It comes through the government. Now it's time to collect Social Security, you know, all these different cues that we have. And you know, what I've basically done is to just say, none of that is actually serving me. None of that is actually serving me. 0% of that is serving me. So I, I just reject all of it and I wake up 27 every day. And I have found that waking up 27 every day is one of the most powerful things I've ever done. Because if I don't feel 27, I don't say, ah, but you're, you're good for your age. You know, you just did this, that, or the other thing, or you can do this or the other thing. It's like, no, what do I need to do to be 27? And in life, what I've discovered is we only get the answers to the questions that we're asking.

That's right.

So if I'm asking, what do I need to do to be 27, not what do I need to be good for a certain particular chronological age, I find that that has driven so much progress for me in terms of recovery, regeneration, recapturing, whatever, to the point where I literally, I wake up 27. I mean, I can do, I can do everything I did at 27 and I can do a lot of it much better. In fact, I'm, it's a really interesting thing. Back in 1976, I graduated from college and a high school friend of mine got married that year and I sang a song, Paul Stookey's The Wedding Song at, at their wedding. Right. I don't know if you remember that song.

Yeah. Yeah.

So they're having their 50th wedding anniversary this August and they invited me to come back. And so I thought, you know what, I'm going to go back and sing that song for them. They don't know that. In fact, it's a surprise party for them. The daughters reached out to me. Yeah. So I'm going to sing that song for them again. And I'm relearning the song, right? Because I hadn't played it in a minute. And I'm actually a much better guitarist now than I was then.. And I, I think it'll be actually better than it was then. And, and, you know, it was, it was well received then. So my point is that we can be on this trajectory of only getting better and having more fun. It's really not about, there is no age that like, it's, it's useless. It's a useless construct. So anyway, I'm 27. I'm gonna go back to this 27.

There you go.

I love it.

You know, I wanna talk about creativity for a moment cuz I did a whole chapter on creativity for Longevity Nation.

Mm-hmm.

And What I love about the concept is that creativity is its own longevity hack. It's great for neuroplasticity, to your point earlier, great for community, great for joy, great for fulfillment. You can start a creative practice at any age. We collect these stories of people called the Re-Imagineers on our website. Roar Forward, our company that we launched off of Roar is called Roar Forward. And on roarforward.com, we connect stories, we collect stories of people who are doing all sorts of interesting things over the age of 50. And one of the women that we did recently, she was in her 70s and she started taking a welding class.

Cool.

She got interested in welding and she started making, you know, different welding sculptures, etc. And to make a cut to the chase, she ended up creating these beautiful sconces of horse heads that were lit from inside. They're sconces, she has wall, it's called light horse design. And anyway, at 80, she started a business selling these to the equestrian community around the country. And this creative expression has brought her so much, a whole new different dimension of life. And, you know, I interviewed Paul Theroux, the writer who you might know, who's 84, and I think he's writing, he's got 5 novels that are due to his publisher. And he, he was the one that was really teaching me to your point about how creative people, especially as they do it for longer periods of time, get better and better and better. And of course, some of the best painters and the best writers did their best work really in the last half, in the, in the last third of their lives. So I love creativity. It has no timestamp. There's no time limit. You can do it till the day you die and play that guitar and sing that song.

Yeah, exactly. I appreciate the encouragement. You know, I love creativity. In my own personal journey, I've had some really deep spiritual experiences, and I'll share one with you, which is sort of getting directly in touch with consciousness. And when you do that, you realize it's just pure love. It's pure, pure love. And what does love love to do? Well, it loves to create, hence this multiverse of everything, right? And what's the feedback loop on creation? It's joy. So my purpose in life now is from a loving place to create joy. And I think as humans, we're actually at our best when we're creating, right? When you're creating your next thing, when I'm creating my next thing, getting involved in, you know, all the different projects, it's— and the ability to actually find people to co-create with is one of the sweetest joys, right? It's really a sweet joy. That, that is either a great friendship, a great partner, a great colleague or whatever, but the ability to co-create, right? So I'm always looking for the ability to create and the ability to co-create with someone, right? Because that's such, that's, it's just such a source of joy and it's, it's such a source of satisfaction to your point. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, I want to take that. You said something that really sparked a thought in me in this co-creation, but also in the friendship aspect of it. And I'll give you a quick story because I think it's so important for us to make new friends as we live longer and make friends at every age. So about, I want to say about, I don't know, 10, 15 years ago, I needed a new doctor and I was sent to this doctor. And we started chatting and it turns out he's a marathon runner and we were like, well, let's go run in the park someday. So, we went and had a run in the park. Well, anyway, this guy's ended up becoming one of my best, probably my best friend. You know, his— our families are melded. He and I've run marathons all over the world together. He was in Everest with me. You know, we co-create these experiences through our running that is joyful. He's probably 15 years younger than me. So, you know, and he's always in awe of, I can't believe you're doing this. You're like my role model of what I want to be doing when I'm you. But I think co-creation has lots of elasticity in its definition. And one of that is the importance of multi-generational friendships, you know, and I just use that one example.

Yep, absolutely. I think, I think the multi-generational element of it is really important. I have that with my son. He and I can co-create and riff. I have it with a daughter of mine that actually lives in Brooklyn and she's a, she's an artist, singer and waits tables, you know, as people do. But the point is when we get together, we can co-create stories and all kinds of stuff. Right. And it's, it's, it's such a joy. I think, I think people forget about that. They feel like they're so responsible that they need to be doing stuff when really the call is to create and co-create. If people would just Yeah, if you just focus on that, if you walk into a room of people and ask yourself the question, geez, I wonder what I can create here, or who can I co-create with, it will change your perspective on walking into that room.

I love that. Yeah, it's very, really very, very true. You know, I had such a great time doing this book, Longevity Nation, and talking to so many people. And of course, of course, I wanted to talk to doctors, but I also wanted to talk to technologists and urban planners and higher education and creators and marketers, because every Part of it touches the culture, society, and the future of how we, we may live and should live and might live. And, you know, I, it was really, you know, a joy to use the word, talk to so many of these, of these leaders around the world. You know, I went to Singapore and met so many interesting people there. As you know, Singapore is doing such incredible things. And Japan, and I went to the EU and UK and the Middle East. And, you know, just seeing what's happening is so exciting. To move the longevity agenda forward.

Yeah.

Which was, it was a great, great experience over the last year and a half to, to, you know, do that and ultimately write this new book.

Yeah. I love that. I love that.

Yeah.

I hope to do some of that exploration myself. Well, Michael, I'm, I'm a little bit under the gun on time here. I almost hate to cut this conversation off. So where can people find more about you and what you're doing, your website and all this?

Thanks for asking. Well, first of all, roarforward.com is our business, but they can follow me on LinkedIn. Mostly I do a lot of posting on LinkedIn. You know, we're also on Facebook and so forth. LinkedIn is the place I like to be because it's a non-toxic environment and it really is. You learn a lot from people and each other. I did a post this weekend. You'll appreciate this. It had 126,000 impressions, 166 comments. 57 reposts. I mean, it, it hit a chord with people. And the post was really about how marketers, you know, marketers stop targeting people after, at the age of 55. Because they feel like, well, they're, you know, they're in their ways.

They're set in their ways, right?

And we're gonna go chase the 18 to 24 year old. And boy, they're missing a major growth market because the 50-plus, all that we've been talking about, are living very different kinds of lives, have a lot of disposable income, are not brand loyal, trying new things. And that post like hit a nerve.

That's great. I love that.

On Sunday, I was like, whoa. But yeah, so LinkedIn, Rawford, we have a free newsletter, All Around Longevity People. People can sign up for. We have a membership group people can explore on the, on the website. And of course I'm selling books.

So beautiful. Yeah.

Thanks for having me.

Oh yeah. It's great. When I, you know, when you think about the marketing opportunity, especially if you have layered personalities, each individual represents 6 different people, right? So there's a lot of, there's a lot of identities to go after, right? Yeah.

Well, well said. Well said. Yeah.

Yeah. Michael, such a pleasure. I really enjoyed this. And, uh, we will need to do it again.

So, thanks for having me. How do we live young for a lifetime? How do we make 100 the new 30? The answers are out there and we're bringing them to you every episode. Make sure you're subscribed. Check out more episodes right here and follow us on social media so you never miss a breakthrough. Thanks for listening.