What Are the Real Secrets to Longevity?

Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I have a little sleep secret I want to tell you about. Look, sleep is crucial for your fitness, but it's crucial for just plain old everyday life and function. And I find I sleep great unless I have a migraine. And I've had more than my fair share since perimenopause all the way through postmenopause. My secret weapon was Blue Sky CBD sleep gels. Each gel contains 25 milligrams of CBD and 25 milligrams CBN for deep restorative sleep. Something about it helps to reduce inflammation, which I believe for me was key in helping me get to sleep. But the biggest thing is so many of the over-the-counter solutions, whether for sleep or migraines, can ruin gut health, and liver health. Neither one of those did I want to be problematic for me. So this option is recommended by healthcare providers worldwide and backed by thousands of happy customers, many of whom come from our Flipping 50 community. There is zero THC, so it's non-habit-forming. It's made by a trusted family-owned company that we all can feel good about. Third-party tested for purity and potency. And if you're interested, you too can try a sample for just $6. But even better, you can get 30% off forever with discount code FLIPPING50. That's FLIPPING50. Just go to flipping50.com/blueskycbd. We'll put that link in the show notes and you'll find it everywhere on Flipping 50 at My Favorites. What are you waiting for? Good night. Want the real secrets to longevity so you can love it, not just last it? This is it. My guest has a voice so buttery that you'll find it so easy to listen, and so excited, such an excited voice that you're going to get excited too. You'll hear how he fell into longevity science. He shares a wealth of resources, books. If you want to fill your nightstand, this is the place to be about longevity and what it means today. The real secrets to longevity are less secrets and far more science. We know so much that we don't put to use yet. We can do so much better if we want to. So if you're ready to take a look at how to do better, this is how. I'm Debra Atkinson. You're listening to Flipping 50, where I address your top struggles and concerns. Sure, we do that, but we don't always like to be a buzzkill. We like to inspire you so that you expect and demand to age the way you want to, and you expect and demand better products and services in order to do it. I share what to eat, how to move, and how to change your mindset so you can have the energy and the vitality that you want, need, and deserve in the second and better half. My guest today is published author host of the Uncovering the Secrets to Longevity Health Summit, patent holder with a surprising twist. He's not just a visionary scientist, but also a master of comedy improv, right? Like, what a combination. Chris Burrus is the founder and chief science— scientist at MyVitalC, where he manufactures a Nobel Prize-winning molecule responsible for the single longest longevity experimental result in history, a full 90% extension of life. He's the intersection where science meets laughter, and his life's mission is to help people live longer, healthier, happier, and pain-free lives, one dose at a time. I can't wait for you to hear this, and stay tuned to the end because, as I mentioned in the bio, Chris is the host of the Uncovering Secrets to Longevity Health Summit. I'm actually honored to be a part of that summit. No matter what you might think about your lack of time, your lack of energy, we are all putting things between our ears. And those messages that go in matter. Choose, choose really wisely. For, for a short week, spend some time with the guests that Chris vetted very carefully. And I'm honored to include myself. I realize I'm complimenting myself by saying that, but honored to be included in that select group and put some things in there on purpose about what's possible, about what science is telling us now and that we know but yet have not adopted. Realize that just one quote like this can make a huge difference. It takes almost 17 years for science that makes peer-reviewed journals and gets published to be mainstream and accepted. I mean, the first thing we do is ridicule people who are early adopters. Think about opening up your mind and possibilities, and for whatever you are listening to for one short week, consider sticking around. Give this next 45 minutes your attention, and I think we'll win you over. Here we go. Chris, thanks so much for being here today.

Debra, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to, to connect with you again because we were connected recently, and to also connect with your audience.

Yeah, well, this audience cares about your topic, that is for sure. And I gotta tell you, this to me feels like I'm talking to you at the right time, in the right moment in time, because I feel like longevity is a buzzword of maybe end of '23 and top of 24 for sure. I mean, do you feel the same?

Yeah, Peter Attia, a book by Tony Robbins and Peter Diamantes, kind of off the shoulders of, you know, a couple years back. Lifespan with David Sinclair. Yeah, I, I describe it in a couple of ways. One is a quantum shift in how the medical and longevity community thinks about aging, uh, and, and also just a longevity revolution.

I also have a question for you. For those voracious readers in our audience, have you read all those books? And of those, which one would you say would be the first one a listener wants to read?

Well, let's see. Okay, so yes, I have read them, uh, and, and another book that I would throw out there, um, is, uh, Dr. Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep, um, which unfortunately doesn't have the same subtext as Dr. David Sinclair's book, Why We Age and Why We Don't Have To. I think we were all hoping for Why We Sleep and Why We Don't Have To. That would have been a nice piece. That didn't happen. I would say the first book, it depends on what your angle is. If you just want some of the best advice, I think in terms of living longer, and I think this is almost universal, one of the best suggestions from the health summit that we were in together, I would go for Dr. Matthew Walker's "Why We Sleep" because we all know, we do this kind of hand waving of sleep is important for our physical, mental, and emotional well-being unless you're going to go out drinking with friends or you're going to go out and have a late dinner or you're going to go dancing or all these things. And I think it's okay to do those things, all things in moderation including All things in moderation. That's a kind of circular argument I like to share. So yeah, every now and then it's good to enjoy those, but that book is really rock solid on convincing you that you need something that you actually do need. I would start there, and then I'm super sciencey, super geeky, so I really loved Lifespan by David Sinclair.

Cool. Okay, that is awesome. So establishing my bookshelf for the year.

So, but don't forget my book, right? Live Longer and Better.

Oh, I like that. That's simple. Okay, so I'm of course going to ask you to forfeit all the— how do I do that on this? But we'll get to that in a minute. How did you start this? All right, I mean, because you don't end up going to high school, to college, thinking, oh, I want to focus on longevity. Or did you?

You are correct. No, I did not. Um, and, and this is in my book Live Longer and Better that I always knew I was going to be an entrepreneur and I didn't know exactly where I would be. I can tell you for sure, 5 years ago, maybe it's 7 years now, if you had said, hey, you will have written a book, you will have done a health summit with amazing people like you, you will be really positioning yourself as a longevity expert, I would've said, yeah, you're probably crazy. That's probably not going to happen. But a circuitous turn of events from really when I was in college. So I always knew I was going to be an entrepreneur. My business partner now for 32 years, Robert Wong, we met in college. He was working with a very famous superconductivity professor, at the University of Houston. Go Cougs. Uh, he— one day the professor came in and said, hey, this material you're working with, it's selling for $6,000 a gram. You guys are young kids. You should go start a company manufacturing this molecule. And my business partner, entrepreneurial background, he was like, yes, done deal. He starts doing it. Uh, a little bit about that material. In, in 1985, 3 scientists at the University of Houston— excuse me, at Rice University here in Houston discovered the third form of carbon. And they actually went on, they discovered it in '85, and in '96, they won the Nobel Prize for that discovery. So, a short 11 years from discovery to being awarded the Nobel Prize. The molecule's amazing. It's great in industrial applications. It performs as well or better than the current best material in almost every application. So, better inks, better tires, better batteries, better photocells. And they actually thought that the molecule would be toxic, so they put it in a toxicity study. And actually, my lab provided the material and were mentioned in this peer-reviewed publication where instead of being toxic— by the way, I'll describe the molecule here in a second because even that's fascinating— but instead of being toxic, this molecule dissolved in olive oil, really the MyVitalC formula, helps the rats live 90% longer than the control group. So, that's the single longest longevity experimental result in history. And, just real quick, that molecule, the best way to picture it because it's amazing, it's the first closed cage molecule. If you imagine a soccer ball, the lines on the soccer ball represent the bonds between the carbon atoms. So, you have a spherical molecule of 60 carbon atoms big enough for any atom on the periodic chart to fit inside of it. And, that's the molecule that has all these amazing properties. And, I don't know if you have any questions about that, and then you might have some inklings of why I ended up in the longevity space now.

So I do, but first I want to go back to— okay, so the rats live 90% longer. How much are we humans like rats?

Uh, that's a great question. And, and actually, um, I— part of— okay, I've got this study, it lands on my lap. My business partner and I really didn't want to get into the supplement space. You know, we'll call it a a challenged space, certainly relative to delivering commercial quantities of carbon nanomaterials to research institutions around the world. That's what we used to do. And so, we tried to avoid this particular arena, but at the same point, I'm trying to figure out, okay, what are the results in this particular study? How does that happen? And so, I start digging in and going, okay, well, what is it that could cause longevity? How does longevity happen? And the medical community seems to think about longevity in terms of oxidation and inflammation. And it's interesting that, that, that particular formula, the ESS 60 in olive oil, ticks both of those boxes. The first box is the antioxidant. There's a peer-reviewed published paper that shows it to be 125 times more powerful than vitamin C. In terms of inflammation, I've got to be real careful. The FDA has guidelines and frankly, they're the right guidelines. So, we can say that the formula is good as an anti-inflammatory, at least as it relates to exercise-induced inflammation. Other types of inflammation, we can't really talk about yet because we need more research. That type of inflammation is really addressing things like arthritis, Alzheimer's, cardiovascular disease, cancers. And so, you can see why the FDA might not sit that— we got to be really careful in that space. I have a sneaking suspicion I didn't answer your question, but, uh, let me know if you did.

Well, I think the question is, oh right, if rats can live 90% longer, can we then assume humans can live what percent longer?

So, uh, I know why I got sidetracked because there's a lot of interesting things. I'm trying to figure stuff out, like this longevity thing, you know, is 90% actually a longer number? It turns out it is.. And I was also trying to figure out that the answer to that question and the best answer that I was able ever to get, my business partner's office is on the other side of a wall from me. And I was, I could hear him having a conversation. Uh, it turned out it was with, uh, Dr. Paul Kudebek out of, um, uh, what, what university was he out of? Anyway, I'll, I'll come up with it here in a second. Um, but he was having a conversation and Dr. Kudebek regularly takes rat studies into human studies. And as soon as I got wind of this, I literally went on, I was probably on 50 different podcasts where I'm saying, look, I'm searching for two things. Is there a better way to live longer? And what is the percentage of things that happens in a rat that's going to happen in a human? Here I've got Dr. Kudebak on the phone and he, DePaul University, and he, and I'm like, hey, I burst into my business partner's office. I'm like, Dr. Kudebak, I've been listening to your conversation. What percentage of stuff that happens in a rat happens in a human? You take these rat trials into human trials all the time. And he told me this, this kind of lengthy story, so I'll try and make it fast. He says most of the time professors and experts will use this case study that I'm about to describe to tell you why what happens in a rat doesn't necessarily happen in a human. And that case study was related to a morning sickness drug. They gave the morning sickness drug to the female rats. They didn't notice any— there were no deaths, there were no problems with the female rats. And so they took this to a human trial. And unfortunately, in the human trial, they noticed a higher increase in deformities in the fetuses that, that the women were having. And so they like, see, he says, this is what a lot of scientists see. This is proof that what happens in a rat doesn't necessarily happen in a human. And then Dr. Kuttabach goes on to say the problem is, is if they had looked at the fetuses of the rats, that they would've noticed the deformities and they would've never brought this product into human trials. And that was honestly the most kind of concrete answer I've ever really gotten. And, and what, so what I would say is there's a reason all drugs have to go through rat studies, right? Because of the relationship to us. Even our own intuition is not good. Most people would think that a mouse is genetically closer to a rat, but we're actually significantly closer to a rat than a mouse is to a rat. So our intuitions about genes and what impact genes are going to have are really kind of askew. And so I hope that I got the answer to that question round 2.

Yeah. So what do you think? How much longer can we live thanks to this?

So I think, well, one, we're going to redo this study because the study actually didn't continue to give doses to the rats as long as I would. I would have given it to them as long as they live. Um, I think that this can have a demonstrable impact on longevity. I don't know exactly what that means. I can share that if humans were to live 90% longer, the average human would live to 152. That's not the oldest human, it's the average human. So there's a bell curve around that average. I think, well, one of the questions that I asked, and I asked you this question of every expert on the longevity summit was, How long do you intend to live and how long do you think humans can live? And most of the answers were related more to, I just want to be healthy, right? I don't want to live in an infirm state. It was only 2 people actually who came back and said, this is how long I want to live, which also coincided with how long they believed humans could live. And I think that's just interesting, right? If you think humans can live a certain age, why not have that as your goal? But only 2 of the experts had that particular goal. For me, my answer to that question, I think it's a two-parter given kind of having interviewed 55 experts in the longevity space. One of them is, what are we dealing with today, right? How long can we live today? And I think that answer is probably in the 120, 125 range in terms of of longevity. But I think that number is going to change dramatically, and I think it's going to change quicker, very quickly. As you look at currently, medical information doubles every 73 days. Back in 1950, medical information doubled every 50 years, right? So I had AI do a quick calculation for me because I didn't feel like dusting off my logarithmic charts and it estimates that by 2034, so just 10 years from now, medical information could be doubling every 1.5 days. So the rapid pace, and that doesn't even really count the impact that AI's gonna have on medical knowledge. We're just gonna be changing so rapidly that we're gonna hit what's called the,— what is it? Critical— what is it called? Critical velocity. I think it's critical acceleration of aging, something along those— I'm messing it up slightly, which is every day we live, medicine figures out how to make us live 1.1 days, right? So ostensibly, that's the point where we can live forever or at least not die of natural causes.

So when you're talking about medicine, all right, so are we talking about living longer, having the longevity because we're under the influence of medications or natural substances, natural lifestyle changes and hacks that we're making?

Well, I think, um, it's incredibly important to implement every kind of natural lifestyle hack that you can and some medicated ones that you can to get to what I call that kind of longevity finish line. Because I believe, and I actually think at this point I'm in a minority, and I think at some point it will be— well, when it becomes a fact, then it's, you know, everyone believes it, right? But I think that eventually we will live forever. And I think at some point that means somebody will be the last person to die of natural causes, and that will suck to be that person, right? So, so do everything that you naturally can. And a lot of the advice from the, the 55 experts were about the natural things that you can do, um, the things that we kind of understand are good, but we just need to be reinforced, and we need to kind of just like sleep we need to turn off the bad switch, right? Yeah, every now and then go dancing because dancing, I love dancing by the way, dancing's amazing. Go see a comedy club, right? But know that there is some sort of price you're paying because you're not getting the sleep you need. Maybe go have a few drinks, but know that there is a price that you're paying for those drinks. Maybe skip a workout one day or one week, but know that there's a price. So, make intelligent decisions about those natural things that you're doing. And then, We're going to start folding in because I think one of the technologies that's really going to help us to live longer is CRISPR technology, gene editing technology. I don't think there's really anyone who would say that's a natural thing, although I am more of the ilk of if we make it, right? We're natural creatures. I'm not a kind of man versus nature. I'm like, we are part of nature and we are evolving nature and we're going to evolve it a lot faster. Some would argue that that's not natural, and I think that's going to be an important part of, of us living significantly longer and, and potentially living forever.

Okay, so now full circle, come back. So was it the discovery of this molecule and then the realization of what that could do that propelled you into longevity is my thing, this is what I'm doing?

Yeah, yeah. No, and I couldn't be more excited. I, you know, when I was first kind of having conversations with Health Means, that's the organization that helped me throw this summit, they— I was nervous and I was excited and they were like, hey, you're going to have to do 35 interviews, 35 to 40 interviews. And honestly, in my head, I was like, I can knock out 25 and we'll see what happens, right? And then I ended up actually, we have some huge people involved in this, right? So we've got Dr. Gundry. If, if you guys don't know him, he's an amazing publisher. He's a 4-time New York Times bestselling author, a former practicing pediatric heart surgeon. I just don't, I don't even know that many people who aren't retired have the title former practicing pediatric heart surgeon. Like, that's just not a career you leave. And, I believe he's delivering more value even now. So, Dr. Gundry's involved. Dave Asprey, the father of biohacking, the creator of Bulletproof Coffee. I have lots of conversations about longevity and biohacking, whatever, and a lot of them, I don't know what biohacking is. I don't want to really— longevity doesn't make sense to me. Oh, Bulletproof Coffee? Yeah, I drink that. Right?

So, I really do. Danger. Now, the trend here is danger coffee.

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He, he had, uh, some issues with his previous company. He's still owner, still on the board, um, but is, uh, is kind of spinning off his own thing called Danger Coffee, which is actually— I have 3 bags. They were, uh, since I interviewed with him, they sent me some, some bags of Danger Coffee. It is awesome. Yeah, is it? Oh, so yes, I, you know, I told them, I said, look, I use Nespresso, right? Nespresso's good coffee and it's simple and you guys don't have Nespresso pods, go ahead and send me the coffee. So, I had to order— when the coffee arrived, I had to order little Nespresso pods that you have to pack and all that stuff. And, I'll be honest, I don't know how long that's going to happen, but I'll do at least a week of the Danger Coffee. But yeah, so now he's doing Danger Coffee. And then, we got Ben Greenfield. Now, Ben Greenfield, I think maybe better known in the biohacking community than— I don't know— than either one. He's got an amazing following, but is less known among my friends who who aren't in the space and my friends who I don't work with. But those are 3, and that doesn't even— Sergey Young, his book is mentioned in Tony Robbins and Peter Diamandis's book, Life Force. So, he's an investor in longevity. I wanted to bring him in because they say put your money where your mouth is and this guy is putting his money in longevity. And so, I wanted to have that conversation. Dr. Tom O'Brien, he wrote Autoimmune Fix, amazing book. He was an amazing person to— I don't know if you know this, he threw the first kind of health summit that created the company that Health Means Is today. Yeah. Is it to talk to that dude? Yeah. Plus getting kind of insights of him getting stopped in airports and like, you saved my daughter's life. Oh really? Like how? Like, that's just so—

I couldn't— I'm going to interrupt you one time, but I want to point out to listeners how, how important what you just said is, because I think that to all of our listeners, they're subject to a lot of, a lot of summits. And so just elephant in the room, right? You're invited to a lot of them. There is this thing I think that we say, you know, summit fatigue. There's always some controversy over, you know, what one expert says, another one contradicts it, and so it confuses me and I don't know what to believe, or it's an overwhelming amount of, of information. But I think what we're overlooking is that this is like a gift, that you are privy to all these experts and to all this information that you're not going to get through mainstream medicine. And that the origins of all of this we just spoke about Yeah, it's—

yeah, and that— yeah, like summits don't exist without, uh, Dr. O'Brien. Um, I mean, they probably happen eventually, right? But he was— he was early on. Yeah. And— and such a— such a fascinating interview. By the way, I was just thinking as you were— as you were talking there that you— you have a wonderful voice. Like, this is— this is pretty cool to—

to be on with you. Well, well, back at you. We'll have to get to the comedian thing in a minute. So I want to know— I also want to know how that plays out on the Summit. But yeah, so you've really teased some awesome people. And as we share this with our health and fitness pros, because there's, there's almost always a functional doctor or two in our audience because they're also our audience, they're also our community— we're not immune, unfortunately. But, you know, finding that people like Ben Greenfield, he's very well known in health and fitness circles as well, and so he's just so broadly encompassed that I think all of our worlds and communities are beginning to overlap, which is very cool.

Yeah, I was— I interviewed, I think it was Natalie Needham, who is amazing, and she actually connected. She was in a large part— she has a podcast, but she's in large part the reason that my summit wasn't 25 people. It was 55 people. Not that she got me 25 interviews, she hooked me up with a lot of different people, so I couldn't be more appreciative to her. She fits in this kind of biohacking longevity, and I wanted to tie these together because every now and then I found an interview where people are like, oh, biohacking, that seems dangerous, or it seems like computer hacking is bad, so biohacking must be bad, that kind of thing. I think especially when I was interviewing with Dave Asprey and kind of talking about his background as a programmer, as a hacker, right? And then, his kind of push to get into kind of biology, understanding his own biology, healing his own biology. And then, it seems obvious to marry these processes, these very logical processes together to come up with a thing called biohacking something that, that people can engage in to really optimize their, their well-being?

Yeah, I love that. In fact, I pushed back against that word for the longest time, but really more out of ignorance than out of knowing. You know, it just— hacking to me has always been like shortcut, quick fix, you know, and so notorious in the fitness industry is what we absolutely don't want people to fall into. But it is, it is so very different. So I Yeah, I wholeheartedly realized that I was already biohacking, you know, without calling it biohacking. And so many of our listeners are already doing that. We're trying to live better. And I think as we flipped 50, everybody here can agree we're more conscious about, you know, our own mortality and doing what we can to enjoy it while we're here. So what, what really come back to hosting the summit? I mean, first of all, it's a lot of work. Yes.

Yes.

Why, you know, what would make you decide other than I clearly you're like, it seemed born of community. You like networking, you like learning, but is there more to it than that? I mean, what's your end objective? What do you hope happens for listeners or attendees?

Well, I think to first answer the question why, you have to understand the approach, which is like, yeah, I can do 25 interviews and then we'll be done. We'll see what happens, right? And then, but I'm also born out of how do— well, one, I'm very comfortable saying extremely selfishly having amazing conversations like this conversation with people who have information that I would like access to. I like that, right? So, that's kind of the selfish piece. And so, as I realized I had the opportunity to interview as many as 55 people, I'm like, "Okay, yes. How do we cram in more?" And I do have to share this. This is kind of funny and weak of me, which is at one point, somebody asked me, "Hey, are you doing the summit all by yourself?" And my egotistical brain was like, "Yeah, I'm doing everything myself. I'm contacting people. I'm scheduling. I'm all of this stuff." And then, my kind of realist humble self was like, "Wait a minute, I have a company and there's products going out the door and there's customer service happening and questions are getting answered. Yeah, I have a team. And without that team, I wouldn't have had this opportunity." What I'm hoping to come out of this is we really are in this kind of quantum shift, this revolution, this longevity revolution. And I just want more people to be aware of it. I know I've made shifts in my life. I've been pretty healthy. I played semi-professional soccer in college, coming out of college. So, I am certainly familiar with training hard and working hard, but I've also always been a person who's like, "Ah, I need to lose 5 pounds, maybe it's 10." And by the way, coming off of Christmas, it's definitely 10 right now. And so I know that there's work that goes into these things, and I just want to share as much of the value, right? If you have the mindset that you're going to die at 73, then you're going to have a certain— that mindset is also tied to the level of infirmity that you're going to have. If you change that to 125, then at 80, you're going to be healthier because you can't be extremely unhealthy at 80 and also make it to 125. Those are desperate concepts that can't coexist. So, I'm really hoping that we can further this quantum shift and start to separate the mindset of living infirm to living older. The other thing, and this is really motivated out of the book Lifespan by Dr. David Sinclair, his premise behind the book. So, this is a Harvard medical researcher, so not a physician but a medical researcher at Harvard University who's got 25 years of work in increasing the lifespan of smaller creatures and then bigger creatures and then bigger creatures. And so, understanding that these will probably map to humans as you get to larger creatures and the more creatures that you do tests on that these test results work on, it's more likely to work on humans. And one of the challenges that we have right now is the medical community does not look at aging as something that could even be solved, let alone it's absolutely solvable and we should be investing in it. So what that causes is there's money for Alzheimer's, there's money for arthritis, there's money for cardiovascular disease, there's money for cancer, But it turns out aging is a root cause of all of those. And so, if you took all of that money, which is millions, maybe even billions of dollars, and threw it at aging, and I'm not suggesting we walk away from anything because I know all of it's important, but you're going to have a dramatic impact on all of those by really dramatically addressing aging. And I think it's important for people to really have a mind shift related to aging.

Yeah, I totally agree with that. And you know, the funny thing— and this is a head-scratcher for me— but there are some really fairly young biohackers like trying to reverse age, and I'm like, do you want to be a toddler again, or what do you want?

How young? Well, so I did— I took a couple age tests, and one of them is GlycanAge. Very interesting test looking at glycans. A very interesting interview so you can understand the nuances of that test. And it showed me to be 33 years younger than my actual age. So it put me at 21. And I kind of joke like, well, does that mean I can't drink? Do I want to even be younger than 21? And that actually topic came up, which was, let's say you could select any age. And until this expert kind of brought this to my attention, like the younger the better, except we have kind of hormones that are going on and out of control. Do we really want to go back that far? Like, that's an interesting kind of awareness I didn't have.

Yeah, I think it's like, okay, wait, I— although, you know, a part of me is jealous. It's like, I wish I would have known some of the things, and yet maybe I don't. Maybe I would have been so distracted and not actually living my life. So would that have been a really good thing to start worrying about aging or thinking about— you know, it's just an interesting dichotomy, I guess. Are you worried about aging or are you simply proactively living younger?

I think, um, the current generation is drinking a lot less. Right? So I read something, I don't know, really recently, and I think, you know, I hope that's true.

I'm hosting a wedding this year.

Yeah, can I cut my budget in half? How young are the people we're inviting? Yeah, yeah. Um, and, and I think that's interesting.

I—

one of the things, and I actually did share this with, uh, uh, with Dave Asprey, uh, talking about the age of people who tend to get interested in this, and another expert, I don't remember who it was off the top of my head, uh, shared that more and more younger people are getting involved and becoming aware of this longevity space, which I, I certainly appreciate. Like, okay, there's a difference between being involved and being preoccupied or stressed about it, and, you know, we don't want to be stressed about it. Yeah.

Okay, and you, you actually have the voice, so I want to circle back to this before I let you go because you've already teased super great content. And of course, I want to tell listeners how they can sit in on this Longevity Summit. This has already been gold, full of tons of resources. But you also have this like golden other talent, which is comedy. Where did that come into play? Were you the jokester in junior high that never grew up, or what?

Uh, yeah, I, I intend to never grow up. That is certainly, that is certainly my fingers crossed. Um, Yeah, I think I was a little bit of a class clown, which you would find in the book. Again, the book is Live Longer and Better. My dad was in the Air Force, so we moved every 2 years. And what that kind of means succinctly is every 2 years there were only 3 other people on the planet that I knew, right? My dad, my mom, and my brother. And so that makes you very adaptable. I don't think that necessarily makes you humorous, but it certainly makes you adaptable. My mom, my mom's hilarious. My brother's hilarious. My dad is a perfect deadpan. And I had this opportunity to join an improv group. And really, the way this worked, my, my wife was working in a program called Big Brothers Big Sisters. We actually have a little brother right now. Love the program. In fact, the little sister that is involved in the story I'm about to tell you runs my office right now. Like she's our operations manager. Um, it's a long recruitment process, but I do recommend it. Uh, so, so she was our little, right, our little sister, um, back when she was 12. And there was an organization, an improv, a comedy improv group called, um, Third Coast Comedy, that would throw events where the littles— bigs could bring the littles and they could do stuff. And one day my wife invited me, and I'm like, I could go there. I feel like, honestly, I was like, I think I have stuff to offer, so let me go there. And it wasn't from a comedic standpoint, just like, hey, how could big brothers and big sisters best maximize the opportunity at this theater? And they had an improv class, so I was like, I'd like that. That sounds really exciting. So I did this improv class, and then I took the exact same improv class because it was half price. So why take the next one? I'll just do this one. I really liked it. And they were just at the point of starting a troupe They invited me right away. I remember two things. One, the way you end the first class is you have a graduation show and people, your friends and family pay money and you get up on stage and do what you've learned. I remember being up there and I was like, "If I'm going to do this, I'm just going to do it big." Literally, that was my thought. I came out on the first kind of game. So, this is like Whose Line Is It Anyway? And I was just a, this big kind of pro wrestler character, and it just landed really well and felt really good. I think to summarize, this probably will get to the origin of your question. One time my mom saw the show, I came up to her afterwards and I was like, hey, how'd you like the show? She goes, oh, it felt like being around the dinner table. So in my family, right, we would take words and spin them and then, you know, double entendres and then just laugh continuously about whatever yes and improvisation was on the table. Because that's, I don't know if you know, the first rule of comedy improv is yes and, which is you never stop what the previous person said.

You always take it and move it forward. Yes.

In business too. It's really, I mean, so I always like to use it because that that company used to do corporate training, and I would actually go to corporate trainings with them. And, you know, when you have somebody present, like, just— we'll just get a little kind of business consulting here— when somebody's presenting an idea and you go, yeah, but— right, like, the idea dies, right? And their, their self-esteem takes a hit. And you can literally say the thing, same thing. So like, yeah, but we've got some federal regulations that might stop that. If you literally say Yes, and we've got to keep in mind the federal regulations that might govern that, right? You haven't killed the idea in the self-esteem and the desire to contribute. You've— but you've literally— and there's a but—

and you've literally said the same thing. Yes. Yeah, we— that's when we've used it most too, like in hot seats. You got a table full of people, you shut first person down, nobody else wants to talk either.

Yeah. Yeah, no, it's got to be, hey, you know, that was— this is rough. You put yourself in a rough situation, and, and here's the— here's the good pieces, and then here's the pieces that could improve.

And along that same lines, I think for everybody listening, maybe this is a good piece where I'm trying to do this a lot more, kind of as a leader behind our business and our team, but everywhere. Instead of getting angry or throwing up the butt It's getting curious about somebody else's perspective or that angle or how that happened. Can we just get curious? And then you're much more open to new ideas or information.

Yeah. Yeah. What, what caused this behavior? Because it's, it's interesting. It's not just something that I specifically and explicitly said you should never do. It's something that you were driven to do for some reason. Let's understand that., so that we can address that.

Yes, yes, I'm going to write that down. I'm writing those words down right now. I'm going to use them again on Monday. Thank you, Chris. Thank you so much for being here. So tell everybody the name of the summit. I have the link in the show notes, so we'll put that here. So you're going to want to come to show notes. I'll leave you that link in a moment, everybody. But Chris, what's the name of the summit? When are the dates?

When do they want to mark their calendars to be sure not to miss it? Absolutely. So the summit is called Uncovering the Secrets to Longevity: Live Beyond the Norms. And it actually goes live February 26th through March 3rd, and there's an encore weekend the weekend after. But you want to get registered, you got to follow the link in the show notes here. It's free to attend, right? So you just got to give your name and your email. Um, and you get to attend and catch all of these shows. I, I, I do wanna share, I asked each and every one of the experts, right? Give us 2 to 3 tips, mindsets, protocols, let's call them shortcuts cuz everybody likes shortcuts that you would give for longevity or a healthy lifespan. And so just that piece, like coming away from 55 experts telling you what their 2 to 3 tips are. That's worth your time, right? So, so kind of jump in, and there are some amazing speakers, uh, that, that you know of. There are all amazing speakers even if you haven't heard of them before. And, and frankly, we, we do have a lot of fun on them.

It was a lot of fun, and so was this. So thank you so much again. You dropped a lot of gems right here, and I think some of them were great reframes, great ways to look at longevity. Possibilities and opening it up, and then ways to go and get some resources, you know, for your nightstand, but as well as listening to it live. There's nothing like listening to somebody actually in a real conversation. I think we all know that by the explosion of podcasts. I mean, how many are you listening to, right? So Chris, thank you again. Thank you so much. You're welcome. And everybody, now it's your turn. So if there's a question you wish I would have asked you can just let me have it on social media, wherever you're seeing this post. And what I would love for you to do is go to the show notes. You'll see that too, and where you can connect with Chris and the summit, Uncovering the Secrets to Longevity. Show notes today are at flipping50.com/realsecretslongevity. Real secrets to longevity. And what are you waiting for? Let's start living longer and better today.