What are Blue Zones?

Summary

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Stuff You Should Know — "What are Blue Zones?" (August 28, 2025)

Episode Overview

In this engaging episode, hosts Josh and Chuck take listeners on a deep dive into the concept of "Blue Zones" — regions of the world where a significant proportion of the population is said to live to 100 years or older, often in vibrant health. They explore the origins, science, critiques, and controversies surrounding Blue Zones, as well as the lifestyle practices attributed to these long-lived populations. The episode is filled with the hosts’ trademark humor, skepticism, and personal reflections.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Are Blue Zones?

[01:15–02:52]

• A Blue Zone is "an area on planet Earth where people ... have an extraordinary amount, or a higher than average amount, rather, of people that live to be 100 years old."
• The story started in 2004 when a paper highlighted a high number of centenarians in Sardinia, Italy—the area was shaded blue on a map and the term “Blue Zone” was born.

Josh [02:52]: "The whole premise was, hey, don't you want to live longer? Let's find out what these people's secrets are..."

2. Popularization and the Power of Habits

[02:52–06:26]

• Dan Buettner popularized Blue Zones with a 2005 National Geographic article, “The Secrets of Long Life”, and subsequent books, talks, and a Netflix series.
• The concept suggests that adopting certain habits could add up to 10 years to one’s life.
• Habits identified include the importance of tight social networks and having a sense of purpose.

Josh [03:06]: "A long, healthy life is no accident. It begins with good genes, but it also depends on good habits."

• Anecdote: Social relationships found to be the one commonality among "superagers" (people reaching 80s and 90s without dementia), even when other habits (drinking, smoking, eating red meat) vary.

Co-host [05:01]: "They said the one single thing that they found in common with all of them was social relationships, active social relationships with people outside of your house..."

3. From Science to Lifestyle Brand

[06:26–07:47]

• Buettner transformed Blue Zones into a lifestyle brand, selling everything from cookbooks to skincare to retreats and hot sauces, and even trademarked the term.
• Criticism arose over where science ends and branding begins.

4. Criticisms and Data Doubts

[07:47–12:58]

• Saul Justin Newman, senior research fellow, is a leading critic, arguing Blue Zones are based on “bad data”.
• Historic parallels: Alexander Leaf in the 1970s wrote about centenarians, only to find later through record checks that many age claims were grossly exaggerated—often for prestige or custom.
• Example: Villagers in Ecuador inflated their ages, some claiming to be over 160.

Josh [10:48]: "So everybody just forget the article I wrote."

5. Origins & Academic Foundations

[11:08–14:33]

• Italian demographer Giovanni Pes and French demographer Michel Poulain cross-verified records in Sardinia, creating academic rigor behind the original “Blue Zone” designation.
• Buettner did not simply piggyback—he was conducting independent research in Okinawa at the same time.

6. The American Blue Zone Controversy

[14:33–17:07]

• Loma Linda, California, was included at the urging of a National Geographic editor for broader appeal, causing criticisms of scientific rigor.
• Its longevity attributed largely to a community of Seventh Day Adventists; in 2020, Adventist Health bought the Blue Zone brand.

7. Blue Zones Expanding & The Criteria Debate

[20:39–22:58]

• More Blue Zones added: Nicoya Peninsula (Costa Rica), Ikaria (Greece), Singapore (added by Buettner, 2023), Martinique (added by Poulain, 2023).
• Discrepancies exist between Buettner’s and Poulain’s strict definitions; Buettner’s inclusion sometimes seen as looser or motivated by branding.

Josh [22:26]: "According to Poulain's very strict definition, there has to be a higher than normal or usual percentage of centenarians ... and that they're typically healthy, active, they're still living life."

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Blue Zones Lifestyle Practices ("Power Nine" and "Seven Principles")

[22:58–27:50]

• Move Naturally – Daily physical activity as part of life (e.g., herding goats, gardening, walking).
• Mainly Plant-Based Diets – Minimal meat, occasional fish; focus on whole foods.
• "Hara Hachi Bu" – Eat to 80% fullness (Okinawan tradition).
• Sense of Purpose – “Pura Vida” in Costa Rica, having a reason to get out of bed.
• Stress Reduction – Downshifting, socializing, getting enough sleep.
• Religious Faith – All but five out of 263 centenarians studied belonged to faith-based communities.
• Family First – Living close to and caring for family members.
• Strong Social Circles – Especially friends beyond the immediate family.
• Wine/Alcohol – Earlier advice on moderate wine; now disputed by World Health Organization: “no amount of alcohol is good for your health.”

Josh [24:09]: "Okinawans are very famous for something called hara hachi bu, which is ... the 80% rule where you eat until you feel about 80% full and then you stop..."

Co-host [26:55]: "Family first is another tenet. You know, live close to your family, care for your old..."

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Scientific Challenges and Controversies

Faulty Age and Demographic Data

[28:04–32:46]

• Newman argues that most supercentenarian records are unreliable, often due to lack of state-issued birth certificates—many were born before these were common.
• Clusters are more likely in areas with high poverty, low literacy, and lower life expectancies, likely due to "pension fraud" and misreporting.
• Birthday distribution for supercentenarians is non-random (overrepresented on the first of the month), a sign of fabricated/guessed ages.
• Census errors: “In 2010, there were more than 230,000 Japanese centenarians who were discovered to be either made up, dead, or missing.” (Josh, [31:22])
• Inconsistencies in Okinawa’s diet—highest BMI and lowest vegetable intake in Japan.

Rebuttals from Blue Zone Researchers

[36:58–40:33]

• Poulain insists on multi-record, cross-checked methodologies: interviews, village genealogies, church and civil records, and even a quality rating system.
• The debate remains: are original records trustworthy, or are errors simply compounded through verification?

Josh [38:53]: "He's doing like legit methodology. So it is kind of tough to just kind of dismiss that particular thing."

• Newman counters with evidence of significant misreporting in Costa Rica’s Blue Zone (Nicoya shrank 90% after age corrections).

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Scientific Standing & Meta-Analyses

[41:45–44:28]

• Expert Dr. Nir Barzilai: "Are the concepts of blue zones consistent with what we know about aging? Absolutely. But the blue zones themselves and the theories behind them have not necessarily been validated scientifically. It's not a study, it's an observation."
• Some supporting studies: Meta-analyses show Blue Zones populations have objectively better grip strength and vascular health markers, but a definitive cause-effect link is lacking.

Genetics

[45:43–47:22]

• Some gene variants linked to longer life found in certain Blue Zones, but contradictory findings exist (e.g., Okinawans’ predisposition to Alzheimer’s, Greeks’ protective gene).

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Blue Zones Today: Fading Phenomenon?

[44:28–45:43]

• Buettner and Poulain agree Blue Zones seem to be disappearing, often blaming the spread of Western diets.
• Newman responds skeptically, attributing it to the correction of faulty records rather than dietary changes.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Josh [05:01]: "I'm in big trouble, man." (On being introverted, not socializing)
• Josh [10:48]: "Everybody just forget the article I wrote." (On Alexander Leaf retracting claims)
• Co-host [21:28]: "I was just laughing because I was wondering if the Nat Geo editor was like, I kind of want to retire near Sedona. See if you can find me some olds there."
• Josh [24:09]: "It's also really difficult to stop eating when you're 80% full. When you're eating processed western food, it's nearly impossible."
• Co-host [30:51]: "So if you put all that together, like, you're like, how is anybody living into their hundreds in these areas, let alone whole clusters of people living into their hundreds? Don't make sense."
• Co-host [41:45]: "And also you're not a demographer and your paper wasn't peer reviewed or it wasn't published in a peer reviewed journal, that is."
• Josh [48:02]: "Although if you live the Blue Zone lifestyle and you're loving life, hats off to you, trademark Adventist Health."

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Concluding Thoughts & Takeaways

• Science vs. Brand: Blue Zones serve as interesting case studies or "observations" rather than proven scientific phenomena. Critiques focus on flawed data, while supporters emphasize lifestyle factors and rigorous verification methods.
• Practical Advice: Despite the controversy, common-sense habits—move often, eat mostly plants, have a purpose, manage stress, nurture relationships—likely foster longer, healthier lives.
• Final Note: The Blue Zone research is ongoing, debated, and possibly fading from prominence, but the conversation continues about what it really takes for a long, healthy life.

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For listeners:
Whether you're skeptical or a believer, the Blue Zones concept offers actionable wisdom, but remember the science is still evolving. Take what inspires you, but stay critical, and—most importantly—enjoy the journey!

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Transcript

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[Super Secret Bestie Club Host]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Josh]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here too. And this is stuff you should know. Our episode on blue zones, which is not. Well, we'll. We'll explain it. It's. It's not immediately apparent what we're talking about. You have to kind of know the ins and outs. And I think that's kind of what we're gonna do here is explain the ins and outs of blue zones. I don't know why I said all that.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah, well, I mean, I'll just go ahead and tell people right off the bat that a blue zone is supposedly an area on planet Earth where people. They have an extraordinary amount, or a higher than average amount, rather, of people that live to be 100 years old.

[Josh]

Well, there you go. Now you know the ins and outs of blue zones, everybody.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

But the story behind blue Zones is what's super interesting. I think it started, well, we're gonna jump back to the 70s at one point, but it started out basically in 2004 when there was a paper that came out that said, hey, there's a large number of centenarians, people that live to be a hundred at least, in a small area in the mountains of Sardinia, Italy. And the author of the papers shaded it blue on a map, called it a blue zone. And then in 2005, it really picked up steam because there was a National Geographic reporter named Dan Butner. Who wrote an article called the Secrets of Long Life, in which he talked about Sardinia and his own finding of Okinawa, Japan and Loma Linda, California, his two more Blue zones, and was like, hey, what's going on here? We gotta figure this out. Because people there are living longer.

[Josh]

Yeah. And the whole premise was, hey, don't you want to live longer? Let's find out what these people's secrets are. Because clearly if there's a bunch of them clustered together, that means they're all doing something similarly. So let's get to the bottom of this, everybody.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah.

[Josh]

And the way that he put it, what if I said you could add up to 10 years of your life? A long, healthy life is no accident. It begins with good genes, but it also depends on good habits.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah, I mean, I think everyone agrees with that generally.

[Josh]

Sure. But one of the reasons why it does seem like there's a set of habits that you can engage in, from the Mediterranean lifestyle or the Mediterranean diet to getting out there and walking every day. A large part of that is based on how popular the concept of blue zones became. And you can thank Dan Buettner, I believe his last name is Buettner. Like he just blew the whole thing up and is. I don't want to say single handedly because there are definitely people working behind the scenes, but he's the one who made it, who introduced it to popular culture.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah, for sure. And sort of off the jump here. I want to talk one second about a side article I read in the New York Times recently. Because one of the things that you're going to hear him talk about, or us talk about him talking about is one of the things you can do to live longer, supposedly, is tight social networks. I just read a New York Times article last week about superagers. And it's not necessarily people that live to be a hundred. That's what Blue Zones is talking about. But it's just people that live into their 80s and 90s without getting dementia. And it was a pretty robust study. They had a large cohort over like 25 years. And they said some of them drink booze every day. Some of them, there have been smokers, some of them eat a lot of red meat. They said the one single thing that they found in common with all of them was social relationships, active social relationships with people outside of your house and going out and seeing people. They said they tend to be extroverts. So people that go out and socialize with other people was the one commonality between all of them that sucks oh, no.

[Josh]

I'm in big trouble, man.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

We got to get you out, buddy.

[Josh]

I guess so. I'm going to have to update my wardrobe.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

You're like, I'm eating fish and olive oil and walking every day, doing everything else. I just don't want to talk to anyone but you and Momo.

[Josh]

I put my hand up by my. My face when I walk past somebody when I'm out walking every day.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

I thought it was really interesting because, you know, most of us in our Gen X category are dealing with aging parents, and I feel like everyone I know is going through it in some capacity. So I'm just reading a lot about that stuff lately.

[Josh]

Oh, that's nice of you.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah.

[Josh]

Prepping yourself.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Prepping myself so I don't do this to Ruby.

[Josh]

Nice.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

You know, Nice.

[Josh]

So, yeah, tight social networks. That is a big one as far as the Blue Zones are concerned. And I guess that's the only one that really matters. But they have other stuff, too. Like, you need to have a sense of purpose. And anecdotally, I know that makes sense, because a lot of people. I don't know if a lot's the right term, but there are definitely people who die very shortly after retiring.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah.

[Josh]

And in the United States, your job, in a lot of cases, is your identity and your purpose in life. People are like family. Forget that. Right. Accounting is my purpose in life. And then once they retire, they don't have any numbers to crunch, and they keel over dead. So that, I mean, anecdotally, that definitely makes a lot of sense.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah, for sure. But this Nat Geo article that Buettner wrote went viral. Buettner was basically like, hey, this is it for me. He did a TED Talk and has developed quite a robust cottage industry around Blue Zones. He's written a lot of books. He's written Blue Zone cookbooks. There's been a Blue Zone Netflix series. There are Blue Zone branded. Like, he copyrighted the term Blue Zone.

[Josh]

Right.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Or trademarked it, rather. And there are skincare products and iced teas and there's hot sauces, and you can do a Blue Zone retreat or pay monthly for a Blue Zone app. There's a lot of stuff that he's selling.

[Josh]

Yeah, for sure. He basically blew it up into a lifestyle brand.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah. Which is one reason some people have come along and criticized it and said, wait a minute. Is this real science and real research, or is this just creating a brand and making money? I mean, not with maybe nefarious intent or anything, but let's look at the science And a big person that you're going to hear come up a lot in this is a guy named Saul Justin Newman. And in 2019, he put out a statement basically that said, hey, I think this is all just bad data.

[Josh]

Yeah, he wrote a paper on it, essentially.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah, like bad record keeping on ages.

[Josh]

Yeah. And this is not new. The idea of super agers or centenarians, especially ones clustered together, has been long controversial. Anytime somebody's come along and been like, hey, we found a bunch of people who are living to their hundreds. Let's look at what they're doing. So the rest of us can do that too. But back in 1973, there was a guy named Alexander Leaf. He was a physician and he got kind of caught up in this whole thing just trying to figure it out. And he wrote an article for National Geographic, just like Dan Buettner did in 2004. But this is in 1973. And he went to different parts of the world where there were anecdotally, I guess, a bunch of centenarians living. And he investigated and he found, yes, there are some groups of people around the world who have some sort of secret to aging late in life because there's a bunch of hundred plus year olds who live in these usually isolated areas.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah. But he himself, and credit to Alexander Leaf, he was like, you know what this all like, even this was after the article was published. He didn't just like sit back and collect his million dollar check and say, oh, I guess that's that. He was like, wait a minute, some of this stuff is nagging at me and doesn't seem to make much sense. So he kind of went back on his own research even and started looking through these records basically. And he, in one case, he saw a death certificate of a man who was allegedly 168 years old. And he was like, that's pushing it, I feel like, for sure. And in another area, he met a villager who claimed to be 122. He went back a year later and the guy said he was 134. So he was like, all right. Five years later, in 1978, he partnered with a couple of other scientists to sort of get down to the bottom of it all and dug through records in these places and found a lot of like, discrepancies where people were off by decades on their actual age. And they reckon that, like, I think they're doing this because it brings them a lot of prestige. Instead of being like 80 something years old, they say they're 105. And all of a sudden they're like the village elder, you know?

[Josh]

Right, exactly. But a fraudulent village elder. So essentially what happened was an outsider, a westerner, got tripped up into what is probably a custom in the area. Like that people just kind of inflate their ages. And people like Alexander Leif are obsessed with finding out exactly how that happens and not stopping to be like, I don't know if this is actually real. But yeah, hats off to Alexander Leif for going back on his own findings and admitting, like, now this is probably not right. Because they concluded without a doubt that the Ecuadorians in this village of Vilcabamba were fraudulent.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah.

[Josh]

And he's like, I'm sure that also applies to the other places, too. So everybody just forget the article I wrote.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah. I mean, that's a. Again, hats off, because that's to put your own name out there as like, hey, I got it wrong. Like, I don't know if I would have done it.

[Josh]

You don't think so? We do that all the time.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Oh, well, that's a good point.

[Josh]

Yeah. We correct ourselves.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

So we're going to introduce you to a couple of more people that factor in pretty heavily here. In 1999, there was an Italian researcher named Giovanni Nipes, P. E. S. Never heard that last name.

[Josh]

No.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

He presented a paper at a demography conference, and then there was a. Why is that funny?

[Josh]

Is it.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Demography conference is like, party central.

[Josh]

Yeah. I can imagine somebody going, what segment of the population here is ready to party?

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah. Or I wonder if they just stand around at break and look out on the street and they're like, how many people do you think are over there on that sidewalk?

[Josh]

Is that right? What percentage of those people are smoking Marlboro Lights?

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

So in that audience, though, where Giovanni Peste was presenting a paper, there was a guy named another demographer, obviously named Michael Poulain, a French guy. And he had recalled this fiasco in the early 70s, and he was like, wait a minute, he's talking about Sardinia. Italy, that, you know, originally the area where Buettner wrote the article. Turns out Buettner wrote the article about this research on Sardinia that Giovanni Pess had done.

[Josh]

Yes. So it's very easy to just assume that Dan Buettner came along and either piggybacked on Pest and Poulain's research or kind of invited himself into their little party. He was actually already looking into this.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah.

[Josh]

Like, I think as far back as 99, he had set up a project to investigate how Okinawans who are widely reputed for living into their hundreds. And we should say healthy, not like decrepit old balls of yarn. Like, they're like healthy people who still move around and do stuff on a daily basis.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah.

[Josh]

How they were doing that so long before Pez and Poulin put their stuff together, or I guess about the same time, but independently. Buettner was doing his own thing, too. So he didn't just come along and steal their. Their idea or their research.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah, for sure. And as you'll see, they worked together for quite a while after this, too. But. So Poulain remembered the thing from the 70s and he was like, all right, I'm going to go to Sardinia myself and sort of dig into this. So he did that. Started cross checking birth records and marriage records and anything he could get from archives in the town or from the church or whatever. And they are the ones they put X's when they clustered. They shaded it blue. And they're the ones, Poulain and PES in 2000, that coined the term Blue Zone, even though I guess Buettner trademarked it. So, I don't know. I'm not sure what happened there.

[Josh]

I couldn't find anything about Poulin or Pez's reaction to him trademarking that.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

I wonder if it was. He did, but.

[Josh]

So, yeah, like, all the X's, whenever they confirmed somebody, they started to cluster so much that it just became a blue region. So now Dan Buettner had a name for this idea, this concept that he'd been working on for years, and he took it and ran with it and turned it into that lifestyle brand. Pez and Poulain essentially were like, okay, that's fine. We're going to stay academic here and try to keep studying this. And Buettner would kind of come in and out of their research over the next couple decades.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah. And the key thing, as far as the original three places in Buettner's article, like you mentioned, he had already studied Okinawa. He picked up on what Poulain and Pez were doing with Sardinia. But Loma Linda, California is in there. And everyone was like, what the heck? Loma Linda got going on. And just last year, Buettner told the New York Times that Lobelinda was apparently included because the editor at Nat Geo said, we gotta get an American Blue Zone in there.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Like, this needs to be. I know it needs to be, like, applicable to our readers here. So a lot of critics, of course, are gonna come out and say, like, that's. That just kind of. That's not science.

[Josh]

No, you don't, like, editors don't dictate scientific methods or results. Right? So, yeah, that's a big criticism. But and I think also, like, I haven't seen anything that says poulain or PEs are irritated by or just like Buettner or anything like that. But just looking at the whole thing from the outside, Buettner just keeps attracting just, you know, contradiction or naysayer after naysayer. And Poulain and PEZ are like, dude, we're doing like real science over here. Like, stop giving our work a bad name because you're out there selling Loma Linda because your editor told you to put it into the original article.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Right? Or selling hot sauce.

[Josh]

Yeah, selling hot sauce. It's another great one. But so in, in I guess, his defense, Buettner said, well, actually, Loma Linda, statistically speaking, people there tend to live anywhere between, I think, four to 10 years more than the average California resident. And there's actually a really good reason for that. There's a huge cluster of Seventh Day Adventists there. And you'll remember from our Kellogg Live episode on the Kellogg Brothers, the Seventh Day Adventists kind of inspired them in their health food movement. They don't tend to smoke or drink or eat meat. And so he was like, that's great. We're gonna include them in there. So it's not like he just threw a dart like the Bay City Rollers and picked whatever city that it landed on, like there was a reason why. And it turned out to be a pretty good business move because five years ago in 2020, Adventist Health, which is a essentially the hospital arm of the Seventh Day Adventists, they bought the Blue Zone trademarks and all of the brand. So they now own it. The Adventists do.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Very interesting. All right, I'm going to ponder that. Let's take a break and we'll come back and talk more about Blue Zones.

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[Manny]

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[Josh]

So, Chuck, like I said, Buettner and Pest and Pullin all started working together in the early 2000s. And Buettner was funded by National Geographic. He was a fellow for them, I think, even before he wrote the article for National Geographic. But they started funding expeditions to look for more blue zones. And in the mid-2000s, 2000, the aughts, I guess they identified two more. One in Costa Rica on the Nicoya Peninsula, and another one in Ikaria, Greece, which is between Greece and Turkey. It's an island between Greece and Turkey. It looks like absolutely amazingly beautiful. But they added them to there because they went and studied the centenarians and said, yep, this qualifies as a blue zone.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

I was just laughing because I was wondering if the Nat Geo editor was like, I kind of want to retire near Sedona. See if you can find me some olds there.

[Josh]

That's right. I heard there's ley lines there.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

I'm trying to sell the wife. More recently than that, they've added more blue zones besides the area of Costa Rica and Ikari, Greece. Singapore was added in 2023. That's in the book Blue Secrets for Living Longer.

[Josh]

Colon. Nothing to add here.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Martinique In 2023, that was added as well. But this was not Buettner. Apparently Poulain is the one that put that Caribbean island, which is a department of France, he put that one on the list because there were twice as many centenarians per capita than mainland France. And so they're saying, like, they're basically finding these things that happen and saying, like, hey, that's a blue zone. We're going to call it that because we made up that name.

[Josh]

Yeah, but according to Poulain's very strict definition, there has to be a higher than normal or usual percentage of centenarians, people who are over age 100, and that they typically are healthy, active, they're still living life. Right. That is the true definition of a blue zone. I get the impression Buettner, including with Loma Linda, got a little fast and loose with the definition and that that's probably a point of contention.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Well, they came up with each of them independently. Came up of their own list, basically, of things to do to live longer. Buettner has his. They're called the Power nine, which is trademarked. And Poon lan calls his the Seven Principles. I didn't see if that was trademarked. I don't hear. Yeah, I don't think so either. Here they are. One is move naturally. And that is basically like, you're not going to the gym every day and quote, unquote, working out. You're just. You're moving through the world. You might be herding goats in this village every day or working in the garden all day long or just walking back and forth to the village to do your Daily trading. They found that if you just move naturally through the world as you age instead of just sitting on the couch, then you're going to live longer.

[Josh]

Yeah. If you have the same daily routine as balky bartokamus, you are probably going to live into your hundreds.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Good one.

[Josh]

Also, eating meat in very small proportions or not at all seems to be correlated with living a long life among blues owners. Usually essentially plant based diets. Some fish depending on where you live.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah.

[Josh]

And then Okinawans are very famous for something called hara hachi bu, which is an 80, the 80% rule where you eat until you feel about 80% full and then you stop, which is extremely clever because you, you get fuller and fuller after you start to feel full. So that that rounds up to the full hundred percent of fullness almost every time. Yumi taught me that. And it really works. It's also really difficult to stop eating when you're 80% full. When you're eating processed western food, it's nearly impossible. But if you can pull it off, you're like, wow, this actually works.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

You should probably slow down too. I bet that helps.

[Josh]

That's what they say.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Because all of a sudden if you're like me, you're like, oh God, I'm at 105%.

[Josh]

Right.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

I was trying to stop.

[Josh]

But also if you slow down and really you can sense the food that you're eating more, you can enjoy it more mindfully too. So I mean, that's what they say for sure.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Sense of purpose. We talked about, it's called different things in different parts of the world. Costa Ricans call it Pura Vida. It's basically like, you know, do things that give you joy and like that you want to get out of bed and do like accounting, right? Sure, if that's your thing.

[Josh]

But yeah, I mean it could be like a hobby. It can be anything. Like just having a reason that you're alive is, is that's your purpose? I think that's, you gotta have that, man. And I just hate to think that anybody doesn't feel like they have a purpose in life. Especially like, I get it, you go through like chunks of life, like say your early 20s where you're like, oh my God, everybody else is more successful than me and my life is off the rails already and I'm only 20 years old. Everybody goes through that. So I can, I can see like going through phases where you are lacking purpose or maybe direction is another way to put it. But like later in life to just feel like you've never Had a purpose in life. I can't bear to think that people feel like that. Anybody out there does.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah, for sure. Stress reduction is another reducing stress. I don't know why that's funny, but you know, taking trips with your family, hanging out with your friends. This is kind of what I was talking about earlier with the social interaction.

[Josh]

Right.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

And also get a lot of sleep.

[Josh]

Yeah, that's very important too. There's one that Buettner lists that Poulain doesn't. It's a religious faith. Apparently. They interviewed 263 centenarians together and all except five of them belong to some sort of church or religion or a faith based community. Yeah, surprisingly most of them were flying spaghetti monster followers. So you might want to look into that for longevity too.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Family first is another tenant. You know, live close to your family, care for your old, get together with your family. That's one. So, you know, we're both kind of screwed.

[Josh]

Sure.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

What else? Strong social circles. That sort of ties into the other things we were talking about. But yeah, you gotta have those strong social ties.

[Josh]

What about taking shots?

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Like taking a shot at your friend or taking a shot of whiskey.

[Josh]

Taking a shot of booze, Doing shots.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Well, I mean, you know, they used to say that a couple of drinks a day, a couple of glasses of wine, like in Sardinia, Italy, is the kind of thing they do. They have wine with food even during the daytime. They've now kind of gone back and said no amount of the World Health Organization, at least saying no amount of alcohol is good for your health. So that was a disappointing finding.

[Josh]

Yeah, that was another one that Poulain leaves off of his seven principles.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

He's French.

[Josh]

Yeah. That's really saying something because they love the wine.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

I know.

[Josh]

They lacked the wine.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah.

[Josh]

So you mentioned Saul Justin Newman, who is the. The leading critic, I guess, of all of this. He says like, yeah, Buettner has turned this into a lifestyle brain. And that smacks of all sorts of, you know, questionable stuff as far as science goes. He goes even further than that. He says the entire thing is based on a faulty premise in that there are no blue zones. There are no clusters of centenarians who live in areas and live a longer life because of these lifestyle decisions and choices and things that they do that just doesn't exist. That essentially the people who study this have been misled by their own data and that that's what is producing what seems like these blue zones.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah. And just in case you're wondering, he's a senior research fellow at the center for Longitudinal Studies at the University of College of London. And he kind of starts out by saying, like, hey, we noticed one thing, state issued birth certificates are really important. And 82% of the super centenarians, and those are people over 100 were born before they started doing this widely, basically. So if we really had the real birth certificates of these people, that number of people living beyond 100 drops way, way down. Like essentially everyone's lying about their age.

[Josh]

Yeah. Or mistaken about their age. But yeah, a lot of people apparently lie about their age. Also, Chuck, one of the other things that he pointed out is that if you study areas, especially in developed countries like Italy, England and France, I think he specifically looked at in areas with the biggest clusters of super centenarians. Right. So I guess that's 101 on.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah.

[Josh]

So those areas also tend to be more poverty stricken. The people have, people living there make lower incomes, they have lower literacy rates, higher crime rates, very tellingly, fewer 90 year olds, which is a big statistical anomaly because it suggests that people are just jumping into their hundreds. Who wants to be like, I'm 92 when you could be like, I'm 102. Right.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah.

[Josh]

And that they also have very paradoxically lower than average life expectancies. So if you put all that together, like, you're like, how is anybody living into their hundreds in these areas, let alone whole clusters of people living into their hundreds? Don't make sense. I think Saul Newman's quote was. Feels hinky, Right?

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

I think so. What he concluded was that in these places that might have high poverty, you're more likely to find what's called pension fraud. So it's family members saying, no, you know, grandpa Chuck is still alive in the back room. Keep those pension checks rolling in. And that's the thing. In 2010, there were more than 230,000 Japanese centenarians who were discovered to be either made up dead or missing.

[Josh]

Yeah. I think Greece also started investigating their centenarians and ended up finding 200,000 people who no longer were alive. So that's definitely part of it. Another statistical anomaly that he points out that is very suggestive of this whole thing being wrong is that if you look at the birthdays for super centenarians, their birthdays aren't statistically random. They seem to be clustered around the first of the month. There's a much higher, I think, 150% higher chance that a centenarian's birthday is on the first of the month than on the last of the month, which makes zero sense, statistically speaking.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

It's like when I fill out any tell us your age thing, I just go, January 1st.

[Josh]

Exactly. So do I. We have the same birthday. Same fake birthday. That's right.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Here's another one. Is that. And this is sort of part of the basis of his whole thing is just that, like, these records are often wrong. They're very, very common in the United States. And this was in 1960. 66% of non white females had multiple official ages in the year 1960. And their ages vary depending on what, like what record you were looking at, whether it was like the DMV or a marriage certificate or birth certificate. And 30% of these variations were off by more than a decade.

[Josh]

Yeah. And he also drilled down a little more and he said some of these like lifestyle claims in diet claims, they're not supported by data. In fact, the Okinawan cohort, they were basically said to have this amazing diet where that's probably a big part of what was helping them live longer. He said no. If you ask the government of Japan, people in Okinawa eat the least amount of vegetables of Japanese people as a whole, and they have the highest body mass index. So explain that. Poulain.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

All right, maybe we should take our second break and see if Pulane responds to your call out.

[Josh]

Okay.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah, he might give us a ring. And we'll be back right after this to finish up on Blue Zones.

[Warren Campbell]

I don't write songs. God writes songs. I take dictation.

[Culture Raises Us Host]

I didn't even know you've been a pastor for over 10 years.

[Warren Campbell]

I think culture is any space that you live in that develops you.

[Culture Raises Us Host]

On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us podcast, I sat down with Warren Campbell, Grammy winning producer, pastor and music executive, to talk about the beats, the business and, and the legacy behind some of the biggest names in gospel, R and B and hip hop.

[Warren Campbell]

This is like watching Michael Jackson talk about Thriller before it happened.

[Culture Raises Us Host]

Was there a particular moment where you realized just how instrumental music culture was to shaping all of our global ecosystem?

[Warren Campbell]

I was 8 years old and the Motown 25 Special came on and all the great Motown artists, Marvin, Stevie Wonder.

[Culture Raises Us Host]

Temptations, Diana Ross, from Mary Mary to Jennifer Hudson. We get into the soul of the music and the purpose that drives it. Listen to Culture raises us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Manny]

Imagine that you're on an airplane and all of a sudden you hear this.

[Maya]

Attention passengers. The pilot is having an emergency and we need someone, anyone to land this plane.

[Manny]

Think you could do it? It turns out that nearly 50% of men think that they could land the plane with the help of 80 air traffic control.

[Josh]

And they're saying like, okay, pull this.

[Manny]

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[Josh]

I'm Noah. This is Devin.

[Manny]

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[Josh]

Those who lack expertise lack the expertise. They need to recognize that they lack expertise.

[Manny]

And then as we try the whole thing out for real. Wait, what? Oh, that's the Runway. I'm looking at this thing.

[Super Secret Bestie Club Host]

See?

[Manny]

Listen to no Such thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Maya]

Welcome to Pretty Private with E. The podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm E. And every Tuesday, I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all. Childhood trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration, grief, mental health struggles, and more. And found the strength to make it to the other side.

[Anonymous Storyteller]

My dad was shot and killed in his house. Yes, he was a drug dealer. Yes, he was a confidential informant, but he wasn't shot on a street corner. He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal. He was shot in his house, unarmed.

[Maya]

Pretty Private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect podcast network. Tune in on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

All right, so we're back. When we last left you, Newman had sort of launched a. I don't know about an attack, but put out a paper that countered a lot of these claims about blue zones being a thing. It's a big splash in the media, and so blue zoners got together and they said, all right, we're going to write a letter back to you defending our work. Like, we will not. This will not stand.

[Josh]

Yeah, and we should say Newman doesn't seem to think that Poulain is some hack or liar.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah, for sure.

[Josh]

Pulain is a well respected demographer. Instead, I think what Newman is saying is there are errors in the records that Poulain is using.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Right.

[Josh]

And once it's in there, when another record gets made from the original record it gets, it just spreads like a virus essentially. And so he's basically saying Poulain is, is using these. This faulty. These faulty records without realizing it. And so the. An error introduced into your data would be totally undetectable in that sense. So he's not attacking Pulane specifically. He's saying like this, the data itself is wrong from the get go.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah, which kind of even negates some of the rebuttal because some of the points of the rebuttal were like, hey, we know that there are errors in fraud, but we go through a pretty rigorous verification process. And we think it's statistically sound like in Sardinia, Italy, that was one of the first Blue Zones named. They said, we have civil databases dating back to 1866. We have church archives. We've got these handwritten records and we have done full genealogies of entire villages and cross checked this stuff. So again, you know, Poulain is trying to do the right thing. But Newman would probably go back and say, yeah, but those original records from 1866 weren't right.

[Josh]

Yeah, but then Poulain would counter, yes, I'm not just using one record. I cross verify. So he interviews the centenarians first and their families. That that's where he gets the original age. And then he goes back and tries to find any support that he can for that. And he actually came up with a rating system of how like how quality A verification is. Yeah, I think there's a starring system. There's also like a. A or something system where like the, the highest quality verification is the centenarian saying their age. And you've got all these other documents that say the exact same thing and that they're. You know, a church record is not necessarily going to be based on, you know, a birth certificate or army registration or something like that. So that's pretty independent. And then he takes it even further and says, you want to do the same thing for the family members, for their parents, for their siblings, and make sure that along the way somebody with a similar name didn't get mixed up and that that's how their age got older and older and older. He's doing like legit methodology. So it is kind of tough to just kind of dismiss that particular thing. The techniques he has for verifying ages.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah, for sure. Another rebuttal was that, hey, Neumann, a lot of the fraud and errors that you're citing weren't even in Blue Zones. You're just saying that that happened. You know, I mean, if it's Happening elsewhere, it's probably happening in blue zones as well, would be my counter to that. But, you know, that was what they came back with.

[Josh]

Well, also in his paper, he does investigate actual blue zones, like the Peninsula in Costa Rica. Apparently Costa Rica found out in 2008 that 42% of its population age 99 or older misstated their age in the 2000 census. And that when they went back and did the math to actually adjust it to reality, the blue zone in Nicoya shrunk by 90%. So he did demonstrate that. Yes, some of these blue zones are just absolutely wrong.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah, it got a little personal, it feels like at the end because they said, and also you're not a demographer and your paper wasn't peer reviewed or it wasn't published in a peer reviewed journal, that is.

[Josh]

And everyone says your breath stinks.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Right. And you, sir, are a nitwit.

[Josh]

Right. Although he was working at the center for Longitudinal Studies, by definition he was a professional studier of studies and going back and recreating studies to find out how valid they were. So he might not have been a demographer, but he was definitely qualified to evaluate the quality of a study. For sure.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah, absolutely. Dave helped us with this and he found a New York Times article from 2024. And this kind of, I think for me kind of makes a lot of sense. It was A quote from Dr. Nir Barzilai is, I guess, how you pronounce it.

[Josh]

Sure.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

He's the director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. And he was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, eat all these good foods, stay physical, supportive friends and family. Like, I think we can all agree that you'll live longer. But his quote is, are the concepts of blue zones consistent with what we know about aging? Absolutely. But the blue zones themselves and the theories behind them have not necessarily been validated scientifically. It's not a study, it's an observation. It's an observation which is consistent with what we think we know about aging. And that's kind of where I landed, was like, just say that, say, hey, we've noticed this really interesting thing and these are the commonalities for people that live longer in these areas. Rather than trying to say, like, this is a blue zone and this is the data and the science behind it, you know?

[Josh]

Yeah. There have been plenty of studies on blue zones and blue zone inhabitants. There's a. This kind of meta analysis that was published in 2022, the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine by Magdaleni et al. I still don't know what et al means, but you know what it generally means by context. Right.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

And others, I think.

[Josh]

Sure, yeah, sure. But it examined essentially each of those lifestyle power, nine or seven principles and the studies that support those. And there have been really granular studies. They referenced some that studied elderly icarians, remember Icaria Greece is one of the blue zones. Studied their grip strength, studied their flow mediated dilation, which is a marker of the health of your endothelial cells which make up the lining of your blood vessels. Like people have really studied this and a lot of those studies have come back and been like, yes, these people have better than average grip strength. Their flow mediated dilation is off the charts. You've never seen anything like it. Everybody says it's just amazing. So there has been, there have been studies that support it. It's just like, I think people, people brush it off because it is very easy to brush off. I kind of landed where you did, where if you take it as a whole, yeah, it does seem to be great, you know, great indicators, great ideas of how to live. But the science is being conducted. It's just not there. Where somebody's like, yes, definitively these are right and these aren't right too.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah, for sure. As far as Buettner and Poulin, they both agree that they think that blue zones are disappearing quickly and there won't be any at a certain point, which is, I thought people were living longer so I was kind of curious about that. But they're finding fewer centenarians in Okinawa and other places and they say it's the widespread adoption of western diet. Newman came back. I feel like every time they like, he's got a Google alert set for these guys. Yeah, Newman came back and said, and I tend to agree with him here, he's like, that doesn't make any sense to me. He said, like, are all these 80 year olds suddenly giving up a lifetime of healthy eating habits and going to McDonald's? Just doesn't make sense. So he goes back again to the record keeping and saying it was never that to begin with.

[Josh]

Right? He. Yeah, it doesn't, it just doesn't. Yeah, it doesn't track. So if they do exist though, one thing that Buettner and Poulain definitely agree on is, and actually Newman too is that they're not going to find any more and the ones that do exist are going to shrink out to basically nothing. It's just different explanations of why that is. But you can kiss blue zones goodbye, basically.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah, well, you found Some interesting stuff on genetics too, because that's kind of the one thing we haven't talked about is diet, exercise, being around your family and all that stuff is great. But genetics, like, probably have to play a part, right?

[Josh]

Well, yeah, they found. You would think so for sure. And they have found some stuff that says like, yes, these genes definitely do appear in certain populations more than others. Like the Sardinians have a gene that makes them bitter supertasters, I think, and it's related to a lower fat intake. Like you avoid fats. So that's sensing.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

I think it's associated with like living longer, that specific gene.

[Josh]

Right. So that makes a lot of sense. Okay. That would definitely help you live longer. But then there's other contradictory evidence that is kind of confounding.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah. I think people 110 years or older. Wow. In Okinawa, they had a slightly increased likelihood of possessing a gene variant. So that makes them more likely to develop Alzheimer's compared to, I think it was in Greece, that part of Greece that had the gene that supposedly protected against Alzheimer's. And they found the opposite to be true in Okinawa.

[Josh]

Right. And yet they're both Blue Zone supercentenarian areas. Yeah. But surely it does have to play some sort of role. And I think in that original paper, Pez and Poulain speculated that inbreeding in that area of Sardinia was responsible for creating these essentially protective traits.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

There you have it.

[Josh]

Either way, the Sardinians were like, please, what are you doing?

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah, stay out of our business. Let me drink my lunch wine in peace.

[Josh]

Well, supposedly there are plenty of areas in the world who contact Buettner and Pouland and are like, hey, make sure you put us down as a Blue Zone because it attracts a lot of like, healthy lifestyle tourists.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah, for sure. And again, I mean, I don't know why this bugs me a little bit more than usual. I think it's great that they put out like tips for living longer, but there's something about like when it's marketed and branded that kind of. I don't know.

[Josh]

I get you for sure. You know what I mean? Yeah, I'm with you, man. Although if you live the Blue Zone lifestyle and you're loving life, hats off to you, trademark Adventist health. Since Chuck laughed a second ago. That's a traditional trigger for listener mail.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

That's right. This is about circular economy and us complaining about appliances not lasting long. Hey, guys, have something to say about this. One thing that people should do is maintenance on the products that they buy.

[Josh]

Yeah, it's true.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

The fact that Chuck hates washers and dryers is because a lot of times products break down due to a lack of maintaining and caring for these products. I'm a home improvement contractor, and I can't tell you how many times I've moved appliances to see the total lack of care that these products go through. It's not just washers and dryers, but most things in your home that you buy. People fail to, one, read the instructions and two, read how to care for the products. Yeah, I just thought that some way.

[Josh]

That's a good point, though.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

A lot of things these days require you to clean, maintain them, so they do last longer. Take for example, the clothes washer. It has three different. Our clothes washer has three different small filters that need to be cleaned out once a month.

[Josh]

What?

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Jeez. And if you don't, eventually it'll break down the washer. My point being, if you take just a little time and save and read those manuals, you'll help them last longer and you won't have to throw away stuff that breaks and wears down. Love the episode. And I do 100% agree that products are made to be thrown out and replaced. I just wanted to add that it's up to us as consumers to do our best to keep the products that we buy running the best that we can. That's my two bits. That is from Justin. And Justin, you are so right. And I shamefully never, ever maintain much of anything like that.

[Josh]

That's funny that Justin wrote that in, because just yesterday I was cleaning the evaporator condenser coils. I can't remember some coils on my fridge. Okay. Look at you. Well, my fridge is not working very well, so I was really hoping that this was the problem. Bob Vila said it was probably going to be the problem, but in that same article on Bob Vila's website, he says that you should do that. You should clean and dust your refrigerator's coils every three months.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Those are on the back of the fridge, right?

[Josh]

Yeah. Or they're in the front bottom, but. And they make brushes. I got brushes for it and everything that make the whole thing easy. But I'm like, I have. This is the first time I've ever done anything like this. And I've had plenty of fridges, so it makes me wonder how much longer other fridges could have lasted.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

You know, I'm sure that's true, but, oh, boy. I don't want to see what's under and behind my fridge at this point. It's scary.

[Josh]

Well, I'm going to go look for the filters in my washing machine that I never knew existed because I get jazzed by that kind of thing. But at the same time, I'm like, me too. After a while, you're like, I'm tired of doing this.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

I changed my air filters and things for my H vac.

[Josh]

You mean? I looked at a house once and these two dudes owned it, and I was like, asking where the. The air handler was, and. And the guy didn't know. And I was like, you know, where you put the air filter? He's like, I don't think our system uses air filters. And I was like, dude. And we drove past the house the next day, and there was a H vac truck in the driveway. So I guess I turned them on to the existence of their air filters.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

That's great. Yeah. I actually do mine myself because is not too hard, but yeah. Yeah, that's as far as I go. And I should go further, for sure.

[Josh]

Are you cleaning out your drain lines? That's another big one.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Drain line for what?

[Josh]

For your H vac. The little. The little white PVC line that's like, running from your air handler where you put the air filter. Huh? There's a. There's. So this is. This drains the condensation from your air handler, and you should use about an eighth of a cup of just regular simple green. Mix in with a gallon of water, get yourself a funnel, pour it in there, let it come out the bottom. You do that once a month during the hot months, and it will keep your. Your drain line from getting clogged up with gunk.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah, I'm shamefully lazy about anything like that. I'm so bad at maintenance.

[Josh]

I'll come over and show you. It'll be fine. We'll make an afternoon of maintaining some stuff around your house. You buy the subs, though.

[Co-host (possibly Chuck or Jerry)]

Yeah, I was about to say, I'll bring the subs. You bring the simple green, and we'll party.

[Josh]

All right, man, that sounds like a great idea. Well, thanks for this, Justin. You really just kicked off a new tradition for me and Chuck. Monthly, I would say. And if you want to be like Justin and kick off a new monthly tradition for me and Chuck, you can send us an email, too. Send it off to stuff podcastheartradio.com.

[Super Secret Bestie Club Host]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Curly]

It's black business month and Money and Wealth podcast with John Hope Bryant is tapping in. I'm breaking down how to build wealth, create opportunities, and move from surviving to thriving. It's time to talk about ownership, equity, and everything in between. Black and brown communities have historically been last in line. Let me just say this AI is moving faster than civil rights legislation ever did. Listen to Money and Wealth from the Black Effect podcast network on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Super Secret Bestie Club Host]

The Super Secret Bestie Club Podcast Season four is here and we're locked in. That means more juicy cheeseme, terrible love advice, evil spells to cast on your ex.

[Josh]

No, no, we're not doing that this season.

[Super Secret Bestie Club Host]

Oh, well, this season we're leveling up.

[Josh]

Each episode will feature a special bestie and you're not going to want to miss it.

[Curly]

My name is Curly.

[Maya]

And I'm Maya.

[Josh]

Get in here.

[Super Secret Bestie Club Host]

Listen to the Super Secret Bestie Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Noah de Barrasso]

I'm NOAH and I'm 13. And I started this podcast because, honestly, adults don't ask the right questions. Now, you know, with Noah de Barrasso is a show about influence. Who's got it, how they use it, and what it means for the rest of you, it's not the news. It's what the news should be if someone Gen Z or Gen Alpha made it. Politics is wild, and I'm definitely not here to tame it, but I'm here to make sense of it. Listen to now youw Know with Noah de Barrasso on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Maya]

This is an iHeart podcast.