Is “Longevity” a Grift? - with Dr. Sanjay Gupta

[MUSIC] Breaking news, spirit airlines has officially gone down. Inoperations, no flights crashed. Now I'll be honest, this is not how I expected spirit to go out. I was expecting more final destination vibes, but I read about the spirit debacle on Ground News, which is today's sponsor. In our favorite independent news source here at HMDK, Ground News is a platform that shows a breakdown of publications reporting on a story. They're typical factuality in which way they tend to lean politically. It's not about eliminating bias, you guys. We've all got them. It's just trying to make the news more transparent. Now, this story gets even wilder. Voice actor Hunter Peterson launched a campaign called Let's Buy Spirit to purchase the airline using a fan ownership model like the Green Bay Packers. Within hours, 36,000 people pledged nearly $23 million, crashing Peterson servers. I mean, it has been so interesting to read articles on this, knowing that they're typical political leanings. One conservative publication called the movement a joke, while a more liberal publication labeled it as a genius idea. More centers publications are all asking what I am. Is it even possible? Go to Ground News.com/Huson to get 40% off the vantage plan. The same one that we use here at HMDK. That's Ground News.com/Huson. Summer. It's when we share more time, more memories, and more photos. And at AT&T, the iPhone 17 Pro is your summer essential. At the center stage, front camera auto adjusts the frame to fit everyone into group selfies. You don't even have to turn your phone. And AT&T makes sharing those pics with everyone easy. Right now at AT&T, ask how you can get an iPhone 17 Pro on them with eligible iPhone trade-in any condition. Requires trade-in of iPhone 15 Plus or higher excludes iPhone 16E and 17E requires eligible plan, terms, and restrictions apply, subject to change. Visit ATT.com/iPhone or visit AT&T Store for details. 3 years ago, I asked the most unthinkable and crazy question possible. Are we the first generation that won't die? No. Look, the title of the show is Hussam and Hush doesn't know, but there are two things that I know for sure. Number one, whatever the next Nolan movie is, it will be worth watching in the actual movie theaters. And two, we will all die. Everywhere I look, I am being bombarded with products and services, promising me longevity. What's the answer to longevity? It isn't a secret ingredient. I have been watching for 100 years on the phone. The wellness meets longevity. The problem longevity and well-being with the fastest technology in the world. It feels like getting decades to your life. Begin your journey to age yourself. I'll be honest, when I hit 40 last year I started listening. Supplements hit me. I like therapy, of course. Cold plunges? Hell no. Now, on one hand, this feels like a totally normal thing for people to want. Healing, strength, youth. It is literally the story of the Holy Grail. But on the other hand, it's all being packaged in weird powders, in serums, in full body scans, in straight up vampire blood transfusions. Sold to us by guys who either hung out with Jeffrey Epstein or look like raw chicken. I am the healthiest person on planet Earth. So is this whole longevity thing a grift? This is real insurance, by the way. Insurance for your own health and your longevity. I sat down to talk about it with Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the only TV doctor that I trust. One, because he's an actual doctor. I mean, he's literally a practicing neurosurgeon. And two, because I spend a lot of time in airports and they always have on CNN. You've sometimes heard some really hyperbolic things as well. Obviously, he's not going to live to 200. We had an in-depth evidence-based conversation about how to increase your lifespan, the aura ring. They're the CIA, right? Yeah, I don't wear one. Some ways to shorten your lifespan, if that's what you're into, raw milk is good for you. Raw milk's bad for you. It has all kinds of bacteria. We figured this out a long time ago. This is like an example of de-evolution of society. And whether there's such thing as "too old." Oh, wow. [Music] Okay, there are three things that I know for sure. So. [Music] By the way, I have a little bit of a bad back just to say it. Really? And you want me to diagnosis right now? Yeah, I mean, I thought since you know everything. No, no, I don't know anything. I don't know anything. I feel like you know more than you say you know. Well, many would disagree. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much for joining us on the show. Awesome. Thank you. Mr. Gupta, is it true? I read in an interview. This was a 2015 Playboy interview that you never kill bugs. Is that true? That is true. That's true. I think maybe because I'm a doctor, I don't know. I err on the side of life. Spiders, you're cool with them. I don't like them to be clear, but that doesn't mean I'm going to kill them though, either. So you're going to do the whole thing where you take the cup? Yeah, I take the cup exactly. Piece of paper. Piece of paper, I slide it out. I do this with a wasp in our house the other day. Oh my god. Okay. So you're a pacifist when it comes to bugs? Yeah. Most things in life. I never feel good about it afterwards. It's not even in the moment. Yeah. It's more about how you feel. How do you feel? I feel it. Got it. Because do you feel like a huge giant crushing this tiny little thing? Yeah, and I'm, look, I'm not naive to the idea that it probably has no sensation. But still. That's crazy. And in my mind, they for sure feel it. You think so? Oh, when I squash that ant, they're like, "Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!" But I still go for it. Let's move on to something that is more within your domain of expertise. Let's talk about longevity. It's having a moment. Why is that? I think it's been having a moment for a while. I think people have long been interested in this, you know, going back to, you know, Blue Zone Days. I think the idea that there are places around the world where people live extraordinarily long. Healthy and happy lives are those things that we could do here as well in the United States, for example. I think, you know, social media and the sharing of content has made it more of a moment now. I think that a lot of people have entered the industry to profit off of it quite, quite frankly. I'm Tony Robbins, co-founder of Fountain Life. For a lot of people who are longevity doctors who spend decades studying this stuff, it's really hard to study. I think it's fundamentally you're asking a question, will this person live longer? And you don't really know until these people start to die. Did they actually live longer than they otherwise would have? Did they live longer than people who didn't do the things? It's very hard to collect the data here and I think a lot of people sort of entered the field because of that in a way. They're not beholden to the data. They can sell you products. They can make these crazy claims. A lot of which are, you know, pretty outrageous. Has it always been that in the decades that you've been covering health and wellness? Or is it the fact that it is being served up in my algorithm because I'm eating chunky monkey at two o'clock in the morning? I think it's a lot of the latter. I think it's always been there. I mean, the idea really for centuries, probably. The idea that mankind wanted to sort of say, "Look, how do we push the limits of lifespan?" I think more recently people have started to really talk more about it in terms of health span. But I think it's really, I think you are being fed a lot of this content, maybe based on your interests, maybe based on your habits, whatever it might be. Now there's something that people monetize. And I think as a result of that monetization, that has created an entire industry around longevity and wellness and things like that. Some of those products may be great. Some of them may be terrible. The problem is, I think, for the audience, they have a very hard time distinguishing between the two. Why does it feel like there's just two wild extremes when it comes to talking about getting old? Whether I look like Joe Biden or I look like those tech oligarchs who are trying to never die, but they still look terrible. Does that make sense? Yeah. I think that for a lot of people, they are probably using substances to try and promote how they look. Yeah. I don't know whether it's actually increasing their longevity. So I'll tell you, for example, for men, I think the use of testosterone and human growth hormone and things like that has gone way up. For men who are deficient, it makes sense, but I think these are people who are either not deficient or they're mega-dosing. So I think it may make people's appearance different. They're muscle mass, they're bone density and things like that. But I think if the fundamental question still is, is this going to help me live longer? I don't think we know. And I think we maybe really surprised ultimately when the answer comes back because it could be the opposite. It could be that it actually shortened our lives. I mean, many of these substances are associated with all kinds of toxicity in the body and things like that. So someone who lives a natural life, free of those sorts of substances, may live a very long life, even if they don't look as good in the short term at least as someone who's taken those substances. Does it concern you when you see a bunch of teenagers or men in their young 20s taking TRT? Absolutely. Take me through your mindset when you're like, okay, I want to take TRT. It's like sort of like a cheat code is how I thought about it. It's like, why would I not do this? If I could accelerate my progress in the gym with a simple pharmaceutical intervention, then of course I'm going to do it. I mean, this is a problem, I think. And I think it's become very normalized. I mean, you have people, I mean, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. talks about the fact that he's taking testosterone. I think he's 70 or 71 years old. I mean, he's pretty ripped. I think a lot of that probably has to do with those substances. I'm on an anti-aging protocol from my doctor and includes testosterone replacement. - And I think that then becomes normalized for people. Most people, the vast majority, 90% plus, don't need this stuff. And I think, you know, as a doctor, I've always sort of said, look, I think my role is probably to say, let's make sure this isn't harming you. If you come to me and say I'm taking this stuff, and I feel that it's helping me, I'm not gonna be the guy to say, it's not helping you. If you think it's helping you, then it's helping you. I think the person's, their truth comes first. But I do think we have an obligation to inform people if it's harming them. So taking high doses of testosterone, for example, could be toxic to your heart, could cause problems, if not now in life, then later in life. So potentially shortening your life later on. So young men who are taking this mega dosing on a lot of these steroids, the problem 10, 20, 30 years from now might be something that they don't think about. They don't have to think about because they're getting those short term benefits. Are you gonna be infertile? Do you worry about having children? - So right now, I am infertile, but I'm not able to have a kid right now. But if I wanted to, there's a protocol I can put in place to be immediately gonna get. - Where are you infertile right now? - So it's just like a negative feedback loop when you're not needing to produce testosterone anymore 'cause your body realizes, okay, we're getting it from a big time. - So you're not producing any testosterone naturally? - No. - Well, for a lot of people, they wanna feel better now. Right? - Yes. - And I've been hearing this since the '90s. Hey, the secret for me, Fenn Fenn. I'm hearing it now. Hey, the secret for me, OZEMPIC. I don't know, scratch that. The secret for me, M'Jaro, way better. - Yeah. - So I think what you're asking is a fundamental question. And frankly, I've been doing this for 25 years and I think that what you're hitting on has been, I think, one of the biggest challenges. The idea that if I talk to you about the basics and I say if you, you know, if you habit stack, if you sleep right, if you exercise, if you, if you're diet is a certain diet, if you have connections in your life, all those things are kind of boring. You know, they're not the most exciting things to make stories around. And what I'm fundamentally saying is, look, if you live a healthy life, then eventually nothing will happen to you, meaning you're not gonna get these diseases. It's not a particularly inspiring story. I think what we've started to do more, and I really truly believe this, is to remind people that they will feel good now with those habits. So this isn't just about preventing disease or quarter century from now. You will feel better now. You will be a better husband, a better brother, a better friend, a better colleague. All those things now, you'll wake up with more of a spring in your step. Having said that, I think, you know, when you talk about things like a Monjaro or a Zempoch, some of these things do have a lot of data around them. You know, these are, these were, some of these early GLPs, they've been around in Denmark, for example, since the early 2000s. Okay. So some of them have, you know, 20 year plus data on them. You know, we've started to learn about them in the last few years. So, Dr. Gupta, are you saying RGLP1's legit or is it going to be like sports gambling where there's going to be a huge class action lawsuit in years to come and probably a killer documentary series? I think they're pretty legit. I mean, that's the headline. You need to wait long term in order to have that data. I mean, that's just the reality. If someone says, hey, what is this going to do to society or to people 30, 40 years from now to really honestly, authentically answer that question, you'd have to wait that period of time. But, a couple things to keep in mind. If you look at most substances, if they're going to have significant side effects, most of those side effects occur within the first couple three months. Okay. That's a little bit of a data point that I think is interesting. If the, if these substances aren't causing significant problems in that time period, the chance of them causing some problem 20, 30 years down the road is less, not zero, but, but it's less. And I think that's, that's an important data point. With the GLPs, if you look at international data, you have decades plus long data, not in the same size of population like we see now. Obviously, you got millions and millions of people taking it. But I got to tell you, Hassan, I was pretty blown away by how well these, these worked. When I look at the studies now, like, I have a terrible family history of heart disease. Same. South Asians. I mean, we really are more dramatically affected by these things. And the way I always explain to people is that oftentimes, it's the same diseases that are occurring in South Asians as other demographics are just a curt earlier. Why is that? I don't know. It's really interesting because I thought it was purely lifestyle sort of things. You know, my dad has three brothers, for example. He moved to the United States. Three brothers are in India, you know, very similar genetics. And yet my dad was the one who developed heart disease at age 47. And his brothers who are in their 70s, 80s now, they're fine. They don't have these problems. Was it the Indian diet? Was it the lifestyle in India versus the United States? The Western sort of lifestyle? I don't know. But across the board, even in India now, there's this large study called the CARS study. And they're seeing some of these diseases that we just didn't think about as much. You know, quarter century ago, starting to happen and happen in young people. My mom was telling me that South Asian men, biologically, we have smaller veins. Is that true or is that true or is my mom just trolling me? No, no, your mom's right. Mom's are always right. Awesome. You remember that. Well, there's a difference between, are they emotionally right? Or factually right? So my mom is always emotionally right. And I always take your side, mom. I want you to know that when I'm in the room with you. That being said, she's factually right this time. She's factually right as well. Yeah. I mean, so it's the blood vessels called the coronary blood vessels. Those are the blood vessels that provide blood to the heart. Okay. Those are the ones that can develop plaques and develop blockages and things like that. So if they're smaller, then they're more likely to develop those plaques and things earlier. So that could be part of the timeline, why 10 years earlier. It's not like other people don't have those plaques, but in a bigger blood vessel, they may not feel it. So we're two cute brown boys. Are you telling me that we're f***ed? I think there's things we can do about it. Okay. But I think we kind of have to work harder than everyone else. Like my dad having heart disease of 47, I'm 57 now. Yeah. So when I was getting around his age, it was something I thought about a lot. Wow. Because I thought, look, he was never overweight or anything. He was actually pretty active. Did he have the thing that all Indian men have, which is the ET body? ET body? You know, ET, Steven Spielberg's ET. Yeah. Big tummy, long tummy, skinny. I think the arms were normal length. The fingers were pretty long. I think also normal. A little bit of a tummy. You think ET's fingers were more of my dad. I thought we were talking about my dad. Okay. But was he skinny with a tummy like this? He had a little bit of a tummy, but he was pretty active. But developed diabetes, late 30s, type 2 diabetes. Yeah. Which was surprised everybody, because typically you think of that with obesity. But again, I think this goes back to the South Asian thing. Maybe he was, he would have developed it eventually, but he just developed it much earlier. Well, one of the things that I wanted to zoom out with you on is it's imperative that everybody approaches the basics and tries to accomplish that for a healthier, happier life. Now, you wrote a book almost 20 years ago. Yeah. I had to break it to you. I really read books. So what we're going to do is a visual recap. Okay. But it's called Chasing Life. Now, since then, products and services offering you longevity have exploded. But let's just go through the basics of how to improve your life per the book that you wrote. Okay. Now, give me the basic things everybody can do to live longer. You start with exercise. How many hours a week we talking? I'm an exerciseer. So I try and do an hour a day. I think if you look at the recommendations overall, you know, 30 minutes a day at least, pretty intense, you know, medium to vigorous exercise. We talk about heart rate rise. Give me a number. When I get on my peloton, for example, I'm measuring my zones, which, you know, a lot of people do that, you know, 130, 126 is sort of my zone for, I think, what is the most ideal for cardiovascular benefit? Not super high. You know, zone five, I think, is 160 beats per minute. So lower than that, typically. But pretty consistent for, you know, 45 minutes to an hour. So my screen time is about six and a half hours a day when I'm looking at social media and that gets my heart rate up to at least 130, 140 depending on if I'm on true social. I may get up to 150, 160. Does that count? No. Okay. Cardio respiratory fitness, you know, this is a really interesting thing. You can get your heart rate up in all sorts of different ways. Sure. But what we're talking about here is cardio respiratory fitness. Actually, getting your heart, your lungs, everything moving synchronously. So, and moving that blood through the body, that's more than just heart rate alone. The second component you talked about was having a balanced diet. Cut processed foods, sugar, refined carbs. I think it's amazing. 20 years ago, I said that. I mean, and here we are. And now 90% of an average teenager's diet is processed food. So explain that to people. What is processed food? Because you have to understand this is going to go on the internet. Yeah. Where people think the Artemis II mission was fake. Clearly define what is processed food. I'm having a power bar. A protein bar, is that processed? It must likely. Okay. I don't know what you're, here's how I define it. Because I think it is actually a little bit of a difficult definition. If you couldn't make this in your own kitchen. Like if you went out to the grocery store and bought all the ingredients you could buy, could you then make the product that you're about to eat? If you can't, that means it's processed. That means it's more of a chemistry experiment than a cooking experiment at that point. It's not food at all. Really, it's a chemistry experiment. You know, the idea, can you even pronounce the ingredients in the particular product? If you can't, you're most likely dealing with a processed food. And how do you make sense of that? Do you take supplements? I take two things now. And this has been fairly recent. And I think about these things a lot. I'll just preface by saying that. None of these were willing, nearly sort of decisions. But again, keeping in mind, significant family history of heart disease. I do want to live a long time. And I want to live a healthy life a long time. So the two things I've been taking are metformin. and creatine. Metformin, I think, has a lot of data around it. It's been around for a long time. - That's a heart-statten, right? - No, metformin is actually, originally started as a diabetes drug to regulate blood sugar. But what they have found with metformin is fascinating is that there's all these what they call hallmarks of aging. Like, you are of a certain age based on revolutions of planets, but you know, for a lot of scientists, they will say your age is based on how much cellular senescence you have, meaning how many poor performing cells you have in your body, cells that aren't really doing much for you, what the status of your immunity is, your mitochondrial function. There's seven to nine hallmarks of aging. So people say, "Hey, look, I can actually say this is what your age is, scientifically, based on measuring these things." - How do you find that out? - I mean, there's blood tests, there's, you can, part of it is genetic. There's all sorts of different things. There's a guy here in New York, Nils Burzalai, who I think has been one of the sort of real pioneers here. He's the guy that actually said to me amazingly, metformin, which is a generic drug, super cheap, pennies on the dollar, pennies on for a bucket of it, I should say, you can address most if not all of those hallmarks of aging. So it helps with blood sugar control, it helps with the cellular senescence, it helps with a known as telomere length, which is the length of your chromosomes, you know, the ends of your chromosomes, all these things. So I thought it was worth it. It's hard to know, you know, how well it's actually working. Again, is it gonna help me live longer? I'd have to die for it to really be able to answer that question right. And then with creatine, I think creatine is the most studied supplement out there. It's really interesting. Obviously things like vitamin D, they get a lot of studies, but creatine, there's a lot of studies on it. And I think a lot of it came out of the fitness community. And I think for people who do exercise regularly, it seems to help. It seems to help with muscle mass and bone density and things like that. Is it true that it also helps with mental cognition? We don't know yet. This has been the hypothesis for some time. This is really wild, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, because I'll tell you something about creatine. It was really popular in the late 90s and early 2000s with a lot of high school bullies. Now we're talking about people who put me and headlocks or titty twisters. Do you know what titty twisters aren't? I'm sorry, by the way. Yeah. And when it's on raw skin, that's brutal. Raw skin, raw skin. Like, you put it on the hard part. And then undershirt off. And yep, you got that right there. They were on creatine. In my mind, when they would do that to me, and sometimes it would break skin, sometimes it wouldn't. I would go, you know what? Your kidneys are gonna fail. And I will wait for that day. And best believe I will celebrate. Then I come to find out, I'm having this conversation with you in 2026 and you're telling me, it helps with muscle mass. Yeah. It's one of the best supplements you could take. I think the most studied for sure. So here I am, not taking it for 30 years. Did I f*** up? Well, I mean, you did what you thought was best. And I'm sure the titty twisters did not help. You're thinking about creatine. By the way, did they tell you that I am on creatine and that's why I'm doing this? Or how did you put those two things together? Well, as much of those guys would open up those black tubs from GNC. Yep. And that's at the time. Again, this is this 14 years old. 13, 14 years old getting after a big dog. Yeah, I see. I mean, what you're trying to tell a lot of people, which is like, here's how you have an active healthy life. Here's how you live a better life. But what you don't understand a lot of young men want to be is they want to be born. They want to be in. I hear you. They want to be the big dying. And then they can do the titty twister to brown boys like you. Sure. Or to any boy. Right. But I'm sure it felt very personal. It felt extremely personal. I mean, how could it not? How could it not? Right. Right. Yeah. The creatine, I still stand by it. I don't know that you f---ed up necessarily. And I just started taking it over the last couple of years. So it wasn't like I was somebody who said 30 years ago, this is for me. I did wait for a lot of that data to come out. And also, I think it does help if you are someone who exercises. If you're someone who really pushes yourself to the limit. It's fascinating the way that it works. You're basically-- you're using creatine to help fuel yourselves, and specifically fuel something known as the mitochondria, which are the energy part of the cell. For most people, daily life, you're not going to exhaust your mitochondria. You're fine. But if you do start to exercise intensely, if you're doing things intensely, creatine gets turned into something known as phosphocreatine, which acts like a good reservoir, I should say, for those cells. So it can help fill the gap if you're really starting to run out of energy or something like that. And that's where I think it helps me. Let's talk about sleep. How much sleep should you be getting? Seven and nine hours. Yeah. That's a lot. I'm starting to get there. I'm starting to get to that point now. Where you need the full nine. I don't get to nine, but I'm getting at least seven. OK. I mean, for a long time, I didn't do that. You know, I think for a lot of people, maybe yourself, included-- I felt like I could power through that. And what was interesting is that sleep deprivation, for me, weirdly enhanced my mood. Like I actually-- you know, that punch drunks sort of feeling that you get when you're not sleeping enough. I'm not advocating for this. When I get good sleep, everything about my performance is better. So in terms of being efficient in life, if I get that amount of sleep, I'm going to actually perform better versus trying to sleep less and do more throughout the day. I'm just not going to be as efficient. The aura ring. Yeah. I don't wear one. I don't wear one. Neither do I. Do you wear anything to track yourself? Just a wedding, or me too? Yeah. I married to my wife and the game. And the game. Do you know what it is? By the way, it's a-- It's a kidding about the aura ring. It's not a CIA to them now. Well, what do you think about it? I wear an Apple Watch when I exercise, because I do like to get that sort of data. My wife wears an aura ring. She loves it. I just feel like it doesn't do any-- I need to tell the time. I want it to have more than one function. So no smoking. Now, did you hear that the UK just banned smoking? For everyone born after 2008, do you think we should go that far in the United States? I think it has no redeeming qualities. And there are very few things that you can say in society that have absolutely no redeeming qualities. Like even food, even the food that we are talking about, the process food, does provide calories. It does provide something. And we have a food system that's broken in this regard. That kind of food is so much cheaper, so much more accessible. You can go to McDonald's and for family of five, 30, 40 bucks, you can feed them. Good food is expensive. Tobacco has no redeeming qualities. It's not providing anything. All it is is providing potential illness. I'm not a fan of bands, but I think highly educated choice, I think is important. Last component, strong social ties. Now, I have over 2 million Instagram followers. Amazing. Does that count? I don't know. Are you strong social? Do you think it does? I feel connected to a lot of people. Do you? I mean, but those Instagram followers? Um. This is hard. This is a tough question, doctor, because on one level, the cloud makes me feel good, and it fills a hole inside of me that I can't quite quantify. But on the other hand, literally anybody can ruin my day. So you got to live with the good and the bad. Have you guys? Cloud. I think it's so ephemeral. Okay. Having Instagram, I mean, I think it's great. You have a lot of fault. Yeah, obviously a lot of people want to follow your work. I think that's great. I think the fact that you can be so dependent on a negative comment from somebody who you don't even know, who may have no interest in benefiting you or harming you, but then says something that makes you feel bad. What are the true health benefits of human connection? Well, epidemiologically, meaning if you look at big societies and say, hey, look, what are these societies having common where people are super happy and super healthy? You do find that they're really connected. They have a lot of social connection that's sort of baked into society, the way that they live, the way that they move around. They're not living in isolated sort of homes. When they go to the store, they do things like here in New York, you're going to run into people. We know biologically more than we did before in terms of what hormones are released in the body. Oxytocin, that's released when you have strong social connections. That oxytocin can help grow new brain cells. And I think everything starts with the brain in terms of your likelihood of exercising that day, making it interesting. You're telling me you're running into people at the grocery store will actually release oxytocin and not trigger anxiety. Because for, I do also have dread of like, I may walk into this lapanded equidity here in New York City. And if I see Ronnie Shang, I'm going to be pissed. I've heard you and him have beef. You're going on tour together. We go on tour to fight. Is that right? People like watching that. It's a debate to the death. You know we live in America. Do people like watching it? People love it. You draw blood. Yeah, you're on CNN. You know how it works. You know the panel works. Oh gosh. I don't do many of those panels or you may have noticed. Occasionally they'll pull you into the kind of stuff. I know. You got to put them up in a six and a half minute block before we go ahead. I can do it. No titty twisters here. I'm telling you. Yeah. I defend my psychological ones though. That's like logical. Yeah. Hold still. I promise this won't hurt. [BEEP] Oh hey there. I was just making some delightful small talk with my employee, Austin. From doing what you love to do, there is nothing better than being surrounded by people who love it as much as you. And if you own your own business like me, you want a higher employees who love what they do too to boost the overall success of your business. 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Enter Max Sugar, Casino King and Lucky auntie's newest toxic situation ship played by the legendary Fred Armason, more money, more problems and more guest stars, including Andrew Reynolds, Camel Nangeani and Lily Singh, the all-new season of the Hulu original series, Deli Boys is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. You know why I love Summer? All those plans we made, they finally make it out of the group chat. It seems like there's more time to fit everyone in. Want camera auto adjust the frame to fit everyone into these group selfies? Let's talk about this. This is an interesting phenomenon where we always turn to old people for the secrets of how to live longer. Every few months there's always this story. Hey, meet this woman. She lived to be 108. But usually their lives and their tips are f***ing crazy. Well, I just avoided dying. Are you excited for your party? So should we take advice from them? Those are great stories to tell. I think that's why they get so much attention. They're the contrarians to everything else. They're the ones who made it despite all those things. Yeah. It's a great story to tell. I think for a lot of people who want some validation that hey, I'm going to be okay despite drinking a lot of die coke or smoking even or whatever it might be, those are the stories that they turn to. That's not what the actual broad data shows. Yeah. What would you tell people? They're watching TV and they see Warren Buffett eats McDonald's and dairy queen every day. The president of the United States is chugging diet soda and eating McDonald's on the regular. They're never going to die. That's actually my theory. They're going to live to be 118. So what do you tell people at home that are in their 40s and 50s that are like you're telling me I can't have a PBR and shake shack? Let me go hard in the paint like Warren. Sometimes, sometimes occasionally. The problem is again for the vast majority of people who are buffets at the drive through every day. I know he is. But think about some of these people that we're talking about. They also have a lot of other advantages that most people don't have. They're getting a lot of healthcare. They're getting probably regularly tested. They may be taking a lot of medications. Is that the life you want to lead? Could you potentially, through the modern healthcare system, live a really, really terrible life in terms of your activities and your diet and things like that and still live a long time? Yeah. You could potentially. But you're not going to feel good and you're probably going to end up on a lot of meds, probably need operations, all that sort of stuff. One of the things that you've covered in your work and in some of the docuseries that you've done is you've gone in deep on the secrets of Japan. Now, people in Japan famously have been known to live longer. What did you learn from the Japanese about living longer? There was a lot of things that I think formulated my thinking mostly from the Okinawans, this island off the coast of Japan. A lot of it had to do with the things that we're talking about. The regular activity, not just going to the gym for an hour a day, but just the regular activity. Humans weren't meant to either sit or lie for 23 hours and then get up and go to the gym for an hour. They just bake these things into their lifestyle. But I think one of the big ones was they don't really retire. There's not even a word for retirement in Okinawa, which I thought was really interesting. There was these studies that came out that found when people retire and they talk about all these things they want to do when they retire. I'm going to exercise more when I retire. I'm going to get my life in order when I retire. They find that despite the fact that they have more time, they actually are less likely to do those things. So actually staying active, even in a job, still makes you more likely to engage in healthier behaviors. It doesn't work for everybody, but I do think it's interesting when you start to just give yourself unlimited time to do things. You become far less likely to do those things. To put yourself on the clock, either through a job or something else, makes you more likely to engage in behavior. So they don't retire. They keep really active. What do they do after 75 besides what's happens? A lot of them are still working. They're still working doing what though? We have the internet. Have you seen boomers on the internet? I know. By the way, you talked about your screen time. The screen time for people over the age of 60 is close to like some 10 hours plus now on average, which is not what is insane. We're going to get to that in a minute, but I have a theory. I've been thinking about this for years. I was like, what is it about the Japanese that make them live so long? Is it how active they are? Is it the anime? Well, I have a theory. Maybe people in Japan are living longer because of this show. Let's take a look. I think there are some other stories about this show. Well, I think there are some stories about this show. What are we watching here? That's a prank show. Do they electrocute them or do they? That is someone getting shot, but it's fake. Fake. Is that the secret to living longer, which is short and one person's lifespan, the person who's terrified so that everybody else can laugh and live longer? No. That's not. Okay. I mean, the idea of being terrified like that, thinking you're about to die, does that lead to a longer life? No, I mean, that guy's got to go. So he's been sacrificed because he thought he was part of a bank shooting or an office shooting. Is that what was going on there? That's what was happening. Wow. Yay. How did you find that? I mean, I told you, I'm on, I have six and half hours of screen time a day. Now, let's talk about this, which is because I am on the internet looking for the answer. There are so many people on YouTube giving medical advice. And this is tough because some of them are actually doctors. Yeah. How do I make sense of this? Because MD Good, YouTube bad. How do I know if the person that I am subscribed to is giving me good advice or if they're just a bad faith grifter? This is really challenging nowadays. And there's great content out there on YouTube. And there's terrible content. Are you serious? I'm serious. There's really good content there. I think the problem is the average consumer has a really hard time distinguishing between the two. You know, basic rules apply. If something seems too good to be true, it's probably too good to be true. I think if you're not seeing it validated elsewhere, like if you see it on one YouTube channel, and that's it. And you're not hearing about it elsewhere. It's probably something that someone is just making money off of you. You're the product at that point. You're being sold something. There's no regulation around it. You know, look at CNN. And you hear what's going on with CNN and this administration and all that and being called fake news. You've got list losers. I say that to CNN because I watch it. I have no choice. I've got to watch it garbage. It's all garbage. It's all fake news. If people were to come spend a day inside CNN and just say, okay, let's just talk me through this. Here's the story idea over here. Between story idea and story going on the air, show me all the various steps that occurred to make it actually happen. The number of people who weighed in, the amount of fact checking, the amount of reviewing of the scripts, getting people from standards and practices involved, all that sort of stuff. There's a whole process. I mean, that is how you arrive, I think, at the most vetted, validated sort of form of content. That doesn't happen in a lot of places. Again, it's not to suggest that what you see on YouTube is necessarily going to be problematic all the time, but it doesn't go through the same process. Have you heard about people turning to Google Gemini for healthcare advice? Yeah. And Claude and JGPT and all kinds of things. How do you feel about this? My general thinking on these sorts of things, this is happening. So I think the idea of sort of trying to pretend that it's not going to happen is probably not a good approach. Claude now has a program where you can load up your entire medical record and basically have it summarize. You know, your entire life's worth a medical record. Summarize this in a paragraph or a page for me. Give me the best sort of plan going forward based on everything that's out there in terms of supplements and terms of medications. I shouldn't walk 10,000 steps. I should walk 11,000 steps. Like what is the ideal way to live for me? I think these AI platforms can start to get there. They do make errors. You know, everyone talks about the errors. Humans make errors as well. So, you know, I think it's a little bit, you know, you get a little bit of the same risk there. I think the concerns about privacy are real. Although I'll tell you, I have three kids, three girls, 21, 19, and 17. And when I talk to them about things like that, like would you load all of your medical records onto Claude? Wouldn't you worry that that could potentially violate your privacy or somebody might get a hold of that? The premium that we played placed on privacy, I did. They just don't seem to place the same premium on privacy. Like that, why would anyone care about my medical record? Like what are they going to do with that? It's a very different sort of environment. So, I think it's happening if you wanted to load your medical records onto Claude and say, optimize my life. Make my life as optimized as possible. But what if it gets it wrong? It can get it wrong. And so, I think you have to validate just like you probably would with a doctor. You may want to, you know, do what they call human in the loop. So, you know, trust me. Trust me. You keep a human involved somehow. So, you trust what you're hearing, but then you verify it. Hey, this is what it told me. It told me that I should take five grams of creatine a day. Is that, is that makes sense? How's that feel for you? God, do that with your doctor. That kind of thing. I mean, I don't know if this is an indictment on the individual or the system at large. I'll give you an example. So, my shoulder's been clicking. And I'm not just doing this because I have a doctor here. I don't know what's going on. I'm a ghostly my doctor and I'm just doing the cough test. And he's like, look, I'm here to just focus on the cough thing, turn right and cough. And we haven't gotten to this. Right. So, I go to Google Gemini. Yeah. And I come to find out. It's called Shoulder Sublicamation. Shoulder Sublexion. Sublexion. That's what I'm trying to say. I've been able to talk to a doctor. So, thank you for a person to talk to me. Yes. But I should have told you that though. How to pronounce it. I was in the back of a new bird. I just don't want to like have it do that while someone's driving me to a comedy gig. I say that to say, isn't that sad that I couldn't get it from the human medical field? Yeah. Because I'd have to book an appointment and he's going to get me to a specialist. And I'm like, you know what? Gemini's just scraped every kind of reddit thread and WebMD thread there is. Totally. And you have shoulder Sublexion. Shoulder Sublexion. Sublimated. Sub-Rain. Exactly. The idea that it would open up every reddit thread. Like, you know, when you look at an AI platform, does it open up everything? Are you basically taking the totality of society and saying, give me the best thing. Whether it be peer reviewed papers, whether it be a reddit stream, things on social media, and give me the best answer here. This is a big debate, I think, right now with regard to AI and healthcare. There are certain platforms, one of them is called open evidence, for example. It will just use peer reviewed data. If you're going there, you're basically getting a sort of summary of thousands and thousands of journals. In this case, about your shoulder. If you look at some platforms, they're giving you the whole world in terms of what people might think is making your shoulder click. And people have varying opinions on which is better. Some people say, look, I just want peer reviewed stuff, but that moves slow. Something happened with shoulder sub-lexation over here in a small clinic in Taiwan. I want to know about that. What are they doing in Taiwan? That's what I think. That's the sort of thing. Exactly. I think that this is a big debate. A lot of people are using, a lot of doctors, I think more than 50% of doctors and nurses are using open evidence now. They'll use it in the office and they will use it for their own personal healthcare and things like that. I think that that's where we are headed. For you, that's probably what I would recommend. The second point you're making about access. This is a huge problem. Awesome. I think the idea that there are people who simply can't get access to healthcare. I just did a story about people who live in rural areas. In Eastern Colorado, there's not a single licensed cancer doctor. Half of the state. There's no people to treat cancer. It's remarkable. In Colorado? Eastern Colorado. Wow. We live a lot of miles away from anything. When people are that sick, it is horrible. The travel. If Dr. Hoyer and his team wasn't available down here, I would not have made the trips to Colorado Springs or Denver. Like what are they to do, you know, folks? Right now you have doctors who are basically driving from Colorado Springs 400 miles, sing a bunch of rural clinics and taking care of patients. Those people are going to go to AI. Yeah, and I want to piggyback off this idea because I'm sure you deal with this paradox now, which is we have so much information. The every peer reviewed medical journal you could ever think of in PDF form that's available to be scraped by every AI platform there is. And yet people are still misinformed. So because I have the Dr. Sanjay, the here and a chair across from me, can we do just a quick medical misinformation for our audience? Yes. Okay, great. I'm going to list some health claims that I've seen online and you tell me whether it's true or false. Okay, you just want one word of answers? Sure. And if you feel like it needs more than by all means, but I just want to let you know people are watching this while they're on the train with one air pot in and or while they're in the bathroom taking a **** away from their family. I just want to let you know that that is 100% the truth and that's where people are. And I'm not here to impose judgment. I'm meeting the audience where they are. The flu shot gives you the flu. No, false. But isn't it a dead virus? Dead virus. So can't give you the flu. So when people say that you're you get a little bit sick after, is that true? The body responds to the shot. You feel inflammation. You may have a sore arm as a result. They can't give you the flu because it's not the flu virus. It's a dead virus. It's just basically designed to induce your immune response. This has been a myth since I've been a reporter 25 years. Raw milk is good for you. What do you mean? It could potentially make you sick. That's why we pasteurize things. I saved a lot of lives as a result of that. Does Wi-Fi cause cancer? There's no cause and effect there. There is some concern about what is called non-ionizing radiation. We know ionizing radiation can cause cancer. That's too many x-rays, microwaves, things like that. Non-ionizing radiation. Putting a phone close to your earbuds. There's no there's not been cause and effect sort of findings. We don't know. So I think Jury's out a little bit on that still, but no cause and effect. Measles isn't as bad as a measles vaccine. Faults. A juice cleanse will detoxify your body. Faults. Rop potato juice helps strep throat. I haven't even heard that one. I saw tiktok on it. Rop potato juice will cure strep throat. No. I don't even know where that comes from. You should leave a comment on that video. I don't even know. Doesn't know. Inserting garlic cloves into your nostrils relieves congestion. Probably. It does make you look insane though. I'm not saying it's good for you, but would it actually relieve congestion? I think there's much safer ways to do that. How about this one? You should take this thing. They also give it to horses. Faults. This is the one I can't figure out. Like why did that happen? Do you know? If you want my short answer, I can give it to you right now. Every institution has failed us. Education is crumbling. There is no such thing as true healthcare for all AmeriCorps. A number of pedophiles that don't go to jail for some reason I have to pay a parking ticket. That I know and love seems to be lying to me. Maybe the answer is somewhere else. There's a lot. Look, look, I don't understand. What I'm empathizing with is I understand people's frustration and lack of access to institutions that should take care of them. When that is in a vacuum, people will go to many different places for relief. I totally agree with that. Those places they're going are taking advantage of them in some way. Sometimes I'll go in for a sports massage and someone will say, "This removes toxins." What are toxins? Are they bullsh*t? I think what they're often referring to are sort of byproducts from the food that we eat, the environmental exposures, ourselves, when they metabolize, they give off these byproducts. Your liver does a phenomenally good job of detoxifying your body. Might these things help a little bit? Perhaps, but to give context, we're talking maybe 100 to 1. We're right, but what specifically are toxins? It's literally from the outside world, like the air that I'm breathing and the food that I'm eating. Yeah, a lot of it's from environmental exposures. But also, when your cells metabolize, when your cells divide, they do give off these byproducts as well, which your body is constantly flushing out. The liver are liver and the human liver is probably the most effective way to detoxify. Yes, absolutely. I got it. Because for the longest time, I just understood it as bad vibes. No, they're actual things. It's something that can harm the cells of your body, typically. Are you telling me the liver does the best job at detoxifying better than anything you can get at Trader Joe's, Airwan, or some random dude who's trying to get me to go to his massage parlour? Exactly. Hey, at a curiosity, if we're talking about toxins, why isn't there more work on those larger systemic environmental factors, meaning polluted air, polluted water? Yes. Wouldn't that be a more efficacious way to remove both toxins and bad vibes? Yeah, absolutely on the toxins and micro plastics, but they're there There is this contention, though, with just living in a society where you want things to be super easy. Plastics, for example, make things super easy, and yet they are toxifying our bodies. We have a really hard time getting rid of those things. So, it's convenience over health. Now that we're seeing what plastics actually do to the body, you're finding plastics in your blood vessels, they're finding plastics in the brain, microplastics and nanoplastics. Some people have said microplastics in the body are as big a risk factor for heart disease as cholesterol. So I think we're starting to become increasingly aware of it, but it's taken a long time. I saw on an Instagram thread that I have enough microplastics in my brain that's the size of a credit card. Is that true? We do carry a lot of plastics in our body. Maybe a credit card's worth in our entire body. Okay. I think that's what I've seen. Okay. We've known this for years, though, intuitively. Like, when I drink out of a plastic crystal guise or bottle, I know it doesn't taste like water. It kind of tastes like water that was microwaved inside of a ziplock bag. Really? Did you microwave it? No, you had. The water tastes plasticky. There's a lot of plastics in all these products. I think we are going to move away from that. I mean, I'm starting to use products like even things that we know we're not going to give off plastics that are going to be much more durable. How do we get expensive? How do we get ahead of this? Because every time I get a new pan or I get a new Stanley, then a few weeks later, I see Sunche Gupta on CNN telling me breaking news. That's also killing you. So what do I do? I think for now, if you can avoid plastics, that's probably the biggest thing you can do. Okay. And should do. As much as we make fun of RFK Jr. on this show, "Hey, everybody, these are my new Ravens." I don't think people should be taking advice, medical advice, make. There's a couple things that we actually agree with him on. Are there things that you agree with him on? Because I have two. It's hard to find those things. The one thing I think I did agree with him on for a long time was the potential harms of glyphosate, which is roundup, you know, it's a pesticide. I think he did incredible work on that. And you know, these various cancer organizations declare this a possible or probable carcinogen. And yet, you know, he is in favor, apparently, of making it more available now. The president has said this is a national security issue to make sure we have plenty of glyphosate in our agriculture. And RFK, who campaigned on this, made his entire career on this, was up there, I think supporting the president. So I think it's increasingly hard to find things that I agree with him on. Well, there's one thing that he said is he has been a huge advocate of cutting sugar and processed food. How bad is sugar and processed food to our health? It's terrible. There's no question. I think processed. He defined terrible. Like I'm having a can of Pepsi with two delicious slices of New York City pizza. Right. A young person who basically lives their entire life eating that sort of food, we know that it's probably going to be associated with all sorts of chronic diseases, autoimmune disease, and probably a shorter lifespan. And you're right. That is probably one area, I think, of widespread agreement. I think everyone agrees with this. And people have been talking about this for a long time. I think the real question is what's going to be done about it? How is that actually going to be addressed? And I haven't seen any movement in this regard. There's another thing that I agree with him on. And yeah, I get it. I've dunked on him before on the show. I probably don't kind of begin. But there is another thing that I agree with him on, which is banning D2C pharmaceutical ads. Let's take a look. Do you have metastatic breast cancer? Unfolding more of your story may be possible with Truecap. Truecap is taken with full vestorant for people with HR positive, her too negative NBC, abnormal pick 3CA, AKT1 or P10 genes and progression on or after hormone therapy. In fact, Truecap Plus Full Vestorant make you twice as much time without your cancer growing or spreading it than full vestorant alone. If you have metastatic breast cancer, ask your doctor if Truecap Plus Full Vestorant is right for you. What the hell is happening here? You started nodding to this ad. I'm watching this as a civilian being like, what the f*** is that? If you have metastatic cancer, find out if Truecap is right for I have to watch an ad on CNN. Tell me if I need to get this drug, if I have metastatic cancer, shouldn't my doctor be telling me you should get this drug? Why do I have to watch Stanley Tucci searching for Italy stick around for the ad break? See this ad, go, let me call my doctor to find out if Truecap is right for me. Yeah, it does seem pretty backwards for sure. You should be getting this from your doctor in the first place. So how do you feel about this? Just philosophically at large because this is CNN's revenue. Well, I was nodding because I didn't understand a lot of what they were talking about either. They were talking about so the terrifying mutations. Those gene mutations that they're talking about, I was always surprised that they put that in an ad. So you don't understand what that is? No, I think. Austin, play it again. We have a doctor here. Let's try to make sense of this. Do you? Okay, so she's wistfully thinking and looking out into the distance. Now all of a sudden, her journal has come to life. With Truecap, you can look for the story for people with age or positive. So that's true. Okay, so for, I should have positive picks, I think. A KT1P10, KG. I don't know what, I just can't know what all those, I think. The first gene mutations were. You don't know what those are. No. Well, now she's walking into the movie theater and now she's camped. I just find it interesting, I find it interesting that they put all that in a television ad for the lay public. Here's the crazy part. It just ended the commercial with Ask Your Doctor. I asked a doctor and he's like, I have no idea what I just watched. Presumably, and it's a very targeted group. It's people with metastatic breast cancer. They should go to their doctor first. By the way, I just want to give you just a fun fact. We cut out 90 seconds. I wondered because of side effect warnings. Right. I wondered where the side effect warnings were. Side effects, including high blood sugar, diarrhea and skin reactions are common with Truecap and maybe severe. Your doctor will monitor your blood sugar before you're in treatment. You doctor will wait, you can increase thirst, increase your aging rapidly, loss of diarrhea, fever, rash, reddening, fine chemical skin, or the same skin that lives in high blood and skin type, and then you can't wear vision or anything. These are not all the hospital side effects of Truecap. Truecap can harm an unborn baby. Untreated high blood sugar can lead to treatment in the hospital or death. Now, I dunk on boomers all the time who don't understand the internet, but there's also a lot of young kids on the internet. Now this is just a hot take. Is brain rot essentially just dementia for young people? No, but it has a lot of the same symptoms. Dimensions are real thing. I mean, these are, this is a pathology in the brain. People who have problems with sustained attention due to doom scrolling on the internet and stuff like that, they can have many of those same symptoms. Those are the symptoms. Memory loss, inability to pay attention to things, inability to focus, you know, difficulties with sleep, difficulties forming relationships, all sorts of things, which can have a lot of overlap with dementia. So, similar symptoms, different causes. Other than watching less CNN, what is something people can do to increase their attention and keep their brain health and read books, spend time with other humans, work on projects that are not on a screen. The way that we used to live 20, 30 years ago, probably a pretty good example, before a lot of these screens became so ubiquitous. We had a lot more sustained attention at that time. Read books, stuff, best stuff, because I have some younger cousins who saw the trailer for the Odyssey, Christopher Nolan's, and my cousin texted me and he's like, "Bro, I can't wait to see how this ends." I had to tell him it's a book. You can look it up right now and you can see how the Odyssey ends. It's written by Homer and the ending is available right now. I've got to think that this isn't a linear trajectory towards more and more of what you're describing. I've got to believe that. Otherwise, I think we're doomed. I mean, we're just not going to be able to pay attention to anything long enough to actually get anything done. At some point, I think there's going to be a sort of correction, if you will. I have to hope so. Well, how do you feel about it in relation to your daughters? You have three amazing daughters. Are they pretty sharp or is the brain apple sauce at this point? Well, I think they're pretty sharp, but look, I think they have the same issues that I think a lot of other people. Three teenage girls, the idea that they're spending way too much time on screens, what that's doing to their brains, their ability to just pay attention to things. Their mom and I have tried to do a lot to correct that. It's tough. They have this fear of being isolated if they're not connecting with people. I think the pandemic worsened that for them. At that time, social media was one of the only ways they stayed connected, at least for several months or a year. So not surprising. Can I ask you this? Do crossword puzzles help or is that just propaganda from Big Crossword? I think crossword puzzles can help, but I think if you do a lot of crossword puzzles, you'll probably get really good at doing crossword puzzles. The idea that if you're trying to make your brain sharper, that it's memory, it's processing speed, it's all these different things. What you're talking about is this idea of mental fitness. You've written about mental fitness. In 2024, after that first Trump-versed Biden debate, you got up in there. In you wrote, on CNN that President Biden should quote "undergo detailed cognitive and neurological testing." God damn. I know. I didn't know you carried a gun on you. Because you emptied the clip on Joseph Robin at Biden. There was a drumbeat of coverage for years, talking about Biden's age and mental capacity. Why hasn't the media brought the same heat for Donald Trump? I think they have. I mean, we've been talking about it with Donald Trump for some time. going back to even first term. So it's been out there for a while. I think the idea of advocating for testing. This is something that's been a big debate overall. I think for presidential candidates, when it came to physical fitness, when it came to mental fitness, the idea that someone would go through basic cognitive testing to have that job. This is something Nikki Haley talked about. I fundamentally agree with that. As a brain scientist, maybe President Biden would have done those tests and people would have actually been surprised because his debate performance did not reveal that that night. But keep in mind, the next day after that debate, he got up for an hour and a half and did a press conference, no notes on everything that was happening from a foreign policy standpoint. - Look, I wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump to be Vice President. Do I think she's not qualified to be President? So let's start there. - When it comes to President Biden, they talk about dementia. But then when it comes to President Trump, they say he's "Demented." Is there a difference? Aren't they equally bad? From a medical perspective. - Yeah, that's interesting. I hadn't really thought about the language that much, but just the term "Demented," like the "Dementors" from Harry Potter, it's a pejorative term. Most neuroscientists don't really use that term. They talk about something specific. - Okay, so be specific. When you see his full on all caps, true social posts, happy Easter, we're gonna bomb Iran. Allah Akbar. What's your assessment of that as a medical professional? - I think someone who's become dis-inhibited. More than, more than, what is dis-inhibited? You've lost your ability to inhibit self-regulate, use judgment in terms of how you transmit a message or talk to someone. - So he's combining too many ideas into a soup that seems dementia-ish, but more "Demented." - Stream of consciousness, flight of ideas. I think a lot of that comes back to just being, people may have all these ideas, but then you formulate it into a message that's coherent in some way. If you're dis-inhibited, you're just basically putting it all out there. So I still think this is probably more dis-inhibition, but it's really hard. I mean, the testing that I was referring to in that article, it's extensive testing. These are hard things to know just by looking at one debate performance or certainly one social post to really understand what's going on, but it's a smacks of dis-inhibition of not regulating yourself. - When he says, I got checked out by my doctor, and he says, I'm in great shape. - Donald Trump's very, very large brain. - What do you think of that? - Well, so he had a screening test for a type of dementia, it's called the Montreal Cognitive Assessment. - Like you'll go person, woman, man, camera, TV. So they say, could you repeat that? So I said, yeah. So it's person, woman, man, camera, TV. It's just a screening test. It's not a diagnostic test of any sort. It's pretty commonly used, and apparently he's taken it twice or three times now and said he scored 100% or got a perfect score each time. It's just checking basically screening for that one specific thing, not diagnosing or eliminating other things. - Okay, with respect to President Trump and your professional medical opinion, dude's crazy though, right? It's really hard for, I think, anybody, doctors included to look at somebody on a screen and make an assessment about them. People can be very strategic in how they behave. So you're looking at it, you're saying he's crazy. Maybe it's a strategy, I don't know. That's why you do detailed testing and figure out is someone actually not thinking clearly? - So hypothetically, you were his physician, and you had, let's say, an hour or two to screen him. What are the things that you would take him through to find out? Are you just nuts and on one? Or are you actually exhibiting forms of dementia? - I went through some of this testing myself when I was working on a documentary, and it's hours of testing, and it's everything from looking at memory, to looking at processing speed, trying to measure empathy, looking at all these things in terms of your thinking patterns over time, it's pretty exhaustive to sort of do that. And even for neurologists, they have a hard time ultimately making a conclusion as to whether or not someone truly has dementia. There's no specific biomarker or something like a cholesterol test to say this person is actually that. And then you have to look at them over time. - Dr. let's just take it out of the realm of politics 'cause I don't wanna mess up your bag, and I don't want you to end up on the gutters of YouTube like me. I wanna talk to you about how we treat old people in American society. So I wanna play a clip for you, and this is from the legendary Frankie Valley. (upbeat music) Oh wow. (upbeat music) ♪ We can come to life ♪ ♪ Come on to life ♪ So how should I feel about this? Is this elder abuse? Is this sad? Is this for the fans? Is he having a great time? - Right. - Or is that Al Pacino on his own? (laughing) - I think the third question you asked is probably the most relevant. Does he feel about it? Is this for him? Does he feel honored by this in some way? Does he feel like he's just been made to do this and act like a puppet on stage in some way? It's a tough one. - I mean you saw Jimmy Carter's 100th birthday, right? You saw the photos? - Yeah. - It's fucked up, right? - Yeah it was sad. That was sad. I mean, and you see him come out, he's obviously not communicating anymore. He's not, you know, he's had these terrible diagnoses, he had a head injury, cancer obviously, all that. - I think someone like him, I think the idea that this could feel like it's honoring him in some way, that the fans are responding to that. I mean, I think you have to have lines, but I think those lines are probably different for everybody. What was the reaction overall? And I mean, the reviews and stuff. Did people sort of share your sentiment? - To this performance? - Dr. Gupta with all due respect. Gen Z now uses this as a meme to make fun of boomers. That's why I'm asking you as a medical professional as we live longer, what does a productive healthy life look like? - I think if you feel like you still have meaning, if you're deriving meaning from your work, I mean healthy enough, I mean obviously we all age, we're gonna become less able to do the things that we used to do. But to get up on stage, he's obviously not singing, but the idea that he'd still be up there. - He was singing? - Was he singing? - Yeah, he was. - But that wasn't his voice in the back. - He was singing, right? - Assisting. - Assisting. - Assisting. Like I think about my own parents, and they're in their 80s, and they love to still get up and do things, and I think it gives them so much meaning in their lives. It helps be an antidote for the isolation, the lack of meaning that I think comes to a lot of people near the end of their lives. So I think you have to have lines, but I think for every individual, those lines are gonna be different. Got it. Final thoughts, anything you wanna leave us with? No, I think 25 years now, I've been doing this job. I think it's interesting. I thought one of the things we were gonna talk about was just sort of being Indian and South Asian on television. - I mean, you did the most Indian thing, which was medical advice. - Yeah, right. But when I started doing this, I was like, "Oh, who?" And the Simpsons was the guy on television. And I think 25 years later, like what are the attitudes towards South Asians on screen? How has that changed? Will it continue to change? What does it mean for our kids? - We made progress, haven't we? - I think we have. - I mean, Zoran Mamdani is president, and every week the New York Post says he did 9/11. So, who says we haven't made strides? Am I right, brother? - I think despite those things, seriously, we have made strides. - It's beautiful. It is a beautiful thing. - Yeah. - I think the world your kids live in, my children live in, it's gonna be great. Brown boys are up, it's Brown boys summer. Obviously your team carry your body, you look phenomenal. May God please make people like you in 20 years. Dr. Sonsan, - Appreciate it. - Thank you so much for being a part of the program. - Well done, thank you. - Thank you. - Have you subscribed to Lemon Out of Premium yet? You can listen completely, add free and get access to exclusive bonus content. You won't hear anywhere else. Like my discussion with Malala on how therapy changed her life, or my convo with Mel Robbins on how her Let Them Theory applies to parenting. 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