July 21, 2026 • 59 mins
Because the vast majority of longevity research is based on white people, Mangesh asks the question, what about HIS body? He talks with a Yale researcher from Delhi who explains how centuries of colonialism have shaped South Asian epigenetics, leading to stark inequalities—and more big questions. And then, Mangesh heads to India, where he subjects himself to high-tech services at a biohacking lab and visits a traditional ayurvedic clinic. Back home in New York, his mom reflects on life after loss, and how much longer she really wants to live. Plus: Mangesh’s teenage son explains looksmaxxing and rates his dad’s face.
- Learn more about Raghav Sehgal’s longevity research
- Check out Reverse Infinity and Shree Shanti Wellness in Goa
- Try a recipe for pani puri
- Listen to the BBC audio documentary 3 Million, about the Bengal famine
Special thanks to Azadi Records and Bliss Samsa for their beautiful tracks, and Botany for the score.
Episode collage art by Vahini Shori.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hey, it's Lucas Adams from New York Review Comics here
with a warning, warning, warning warning. Despite Mangesh's grandmother's greatest wish,
he is one hundred percent not a doctor and nothing
in this episode should count as medical advice. Absolutely nothing. Also,
Mangesh finish the show already so we can go get
roasted sweet potatoes at h Mart. They get all caramelized.
(00:33):
Enjoy sodic.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Sud so my god, t other throesome to awesome, toroesome, torossome.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Episode six untapped potential aush.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
So we have started on this end, so we are
currently around six feet BELOWSI eleven. The aim of today's
session is take through to at least thirty three.
Speaker 5 (01:27):
Feet below level.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
It's late February two thirty in the afternoon. I'm in Goa,
sitting behind a locked hatch, looking through a porthole window,
and I'm six feet below an imaginary see.
Speaker 6 (01:41):
Just a rim of trivial.
Speaker 7 (01:42):
A hyperbetic session is actually.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
Known as a dive.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
There's a beach a half mile away, coconut water, and
a book I could be reading, but I met Reverse Infinity,
a self described biohacking lib and advanced wellness clinic in India,
finally trying hyperbaric oxygen in therapy. My body is being
flooded with oxygen, and for the first time, I don't
feel like a longevity tourist from the inside of this
(02:08):
makeshift submarine. I feel like a longevity On the other hand,
A fun fact about me, I'm mildly claustrophobic. So ever
since the door closed and I started this dive, my
heart's been racing. I breathe and slowly. I swallow hard
to unclock my ears, and I wonder if signing up
(02:30):
for a ninety minute session was really a good idea.
Speaker 6 (02:34):
How don't you ask me before why pushing for one?
Speaker 7 (02:38):
Bob feeling actually begins at one bottle fresh to get
the up like.
Speaker 8 (02:46):
We all best trying to take to the idea.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
As I sit in the chamber, diving deeper and deeper,
I think about what's happening inside my body, how my
lungs are taking in much more oxygen than normal, how
that extra oxygen is dissolving into my plasma, reaching tissues
that are injured or inflamed. I wonder if the session
will help my tennis elbow or stiff neck, or if
(03:15):
it will leave me feeling sharper. That's what so many
longevity enthusiasts say it does. I daydream about the possibilities,
and my eyelids grow heavy, and I smile. I think
how happy I am to be here. How I almost
didn't make this trip. How I thought about canceling or
(03:35):
pushing it off one more time, not because I'm afraid
of death, but because I wasn't sure if I could
stomach thinking about it again.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
We'll get I'm just telling you again, I thought you
were kind of got to that. You're right now breathing
mary thirty to forty liters per minute or oxygen. I
don't ada wonder story anymore.
Speaker 5 (04:01):
Sent back, relax, and I have a great.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Session from Validoscope. And iHeart podcasts. I am Monga's particularly
This is how to Live Forever, Chapter one, free console.
Speaker 9 (04:54):
So it goes from lt N, which is low to
your normy right HDN, and then after that there's Chad
true Chad.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Over the past few months, I've talked to investors and
longevenots and frontier scientists with incredible and outrageous ideas about
how to live forever. But perhaps my most disturbing interview
is happening right now with my son, Henry. I've just
learned that Henry and all the other fifteen year old
boys in his grade are low key obsessed with looks, maxing.
Speaker 9 (05:28):
The maiden guy that kind of leads this is clovicular.
They analyze a lot of very like minute details about people, right,
like bone structure.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Right.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Henry and his pals have been watching clav as. They
call him this manisphere beauty streamer slash influencer who's taken
the Internet by storm. They drop code words with the
surprising fluency. They declare themselves super chads, and they fall
over themselves laughing, ranking each other's jawline. So I'm sitting
on my bed trying to figure out how seriously to
(06:04):
take Henry.
Speaker 5 (06:06):
So tell me about myself.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
I'm obviously in my mid to late forties, and where
on a scale, like how would you analyze my face?
Speaker 9 (06:16):
I think I'd give you EMPTN HTN, Right, what's MTN
is mid tier normy? Right, You're better than the load
to your normies.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
On the one hand, talking to my kid like this
is a delight. I'm laughing because he's ridiculous and funny,
and I like getting a peek into his world. And
on the other I'm struggling with this very modern parenting
experience where you listen to your kids spout things they
heard on the internet, and you can never quite tell
what they believe and when they're being mischievous. So just
(06:52):
when I want to start explaining to him the repulsive
origins of looksmaxing, this word that's now used everywhere from
TikTok to the New York Times, he seems to be
ahead of me.
Speaker 9 (07:04):
There's a good amount of anti Semitism in the looks
Max and community. A little bit of it kind of
derives from when Hitler used to give rin examples of
people and how they looked better. Right, So you seem
to have a longer nose, so they probably would give
you a little less credit.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
So he gets it, the cruel mix that creates these
standards of what health their beauty looks like. But I
keep getting blindsided here.
Speaker 9 (07:35):
You seem to have a square face, or as Clave described,
someone with a wider face shape like Donald Trump.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Donald Trump, No.
Speaker 9 (07:48):
I don't, It's just he said that in his example,
people with a wider face shape tend to be smarter
or more intellectual.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
It's notable that Clave's face analysis includes Trump as a
paragon of intelligence. Henry, on the other hand, is joking
around at least, I hope. But then he's got some
tips for me.
Speaker 9 (08:11):
Okay, I see that you have creases.
Speaker 10 (08:15):
I think you should try doing some facial exercises to
make it go away. I suggest wearing glasses more to
make your face look more symmetrical.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
I don't know what he's talking about. I do wear
glasses all the time.
Speaker 9 (08:32):
And i'd say probably start bone smashing.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Clavicular has gotten endless press for telling his followers to
use a hammer to bang their jaws and brows to
reshape their facial lines and make themselves more attractive.
Speaker 5 (08:46):
That doesn't work.
Speaker 11 (08:47):
Make it look more defined, they say it works.
Speaker 12 (08:51):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Class also told his followers that using meth is a
good way to suppress your appetite and to stay lean.
Henry also thought he's people to try crack, but it
turns out that clav tried it but thinks that quote
kind of sucks.
Speaker 11 (09:07):
They suggest doing crack to make you less hungry and
lower your fat percentage because it feeds off of you.
And apparently Clovicular has also done meth, as he stated
on a podcast.
Speaker 5 (09:23):
That's generally arrested me for not looking great.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Yeah, but yeah and destroying your life.
Speaker 7 (09:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
And then he gives me a knowing smile, the kind
I know so well, the kind where it's so wide
he can't stop from grinning because he knows what he's
saying is ridiculous. And in this moment, I feel grateful.
For a long time, I didn't want kids because I
(09:52):
was worried about what I'd passed down, my quirks, my anxieties,
the imperfections of my own body that had a high
likely of showing up in his. I wasn't sure it
was fair to saddle someone with that, But I'm comforted
by some of the things he did Inherit the same
streak I have and that my dad had, where ninety
nine people in a room might be giving you the
(10:14):
same advice, but you can't be convinced because you only
trust your gut. So I know my sweet and weird
and funny kid won't be bone smashing. So people are
taking crack and doing cren Yes, yes, well I've made
prefer math, but looks back to boards chatter about crack too.
Speaker 7 (10:36):
If you want to do crack.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (10:38):
You don't okay, you think I want to do crack.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Plus he can't stop himself from being nice to me,
even if he's still raiding my face.
Speaker 12 (10:49):
But I felt like.
Speaker 9 (10:50):
You're kind of HTN.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Because HTN high tear Normy.
Speaker 9 (10:56):
Well, you have on tap potential right.
Speaker 12 (11:00):
How coarse?
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Chapter two Inheritance Tax.
Speaker 13 (11:20):
I think Frankenstein is the perfect example of building a
longevity monster. This monster never ages. He built it through
building different organs and made him alive through nothing. I
don't think I want to be Frankenstein.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
That's another thing I want. That's ragav Segel. We just met,
but I already feel like we have a lot in common.
He doesn't want to be Frankenstein, and I don't want
to be Frankenstein's monster. Raga is a longevity researcher, investor
and faculty at Yale, and he's young to hold so
many positions, just about thirty. He's got a great smile
(11:57):
and a warmth to him, and right now he's it's
excited to tell me about a new aging clock he
helped invent called systems Age.
Speaker 13 (12:05):
We built this sort of model of biomarkers which can
capture aging in different organs of your body from a
single blood test.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
AGE clocks are a big deal in the longevity space,
and everyone is raising to find a more accurate one. Still,
I can't help but think about another scientist. His work
reminds me of I'm sure this gets brought up a lot,
but the idea of like a single drop being the
answer to all this like feels very theropose.
Speaker 5 (12:32):
Like.
Speaker 13 (12:32):
Ah, I'll like extend the joke for you there, Okay.
I I love wearing black turtlenecks and I was on
fobes thirty under thirty. So my labmates pull my leg
all the time about the tyranose choke. But the science
(12:54):
is real in this case.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
Unlike most DNA metaalation clocks, which try to determine how
old your body is in one fell swoop systems, AGE
uses the single blood test to estimate how old you
are based on the individual ages of each of eleven
different systems in your body your heart, your liver, brain, hormones,
metabolism and more. In the meantime, I have another question
(13:20):
because Ragov was born and raised in Delhi and I
haven't met a lot of Indian researchers in the longevity space.
I'm curious about things like high blood pressure, heart attacks, diabetes,
that skinny fat tire around Indian men's bellies, because these
are all very Indian conditions. As you look at the
South Asian body, what are you analyzing? What are you understanding?
Speaker 13 (13:44):
Let me start by seeing there has been little to
no understanding of the South Asian body in the context
of aging, which is unfortunately just sad.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
So Ragov goes hunting and eventually finds an incredible bank
of data in Singapore which is documented over nine thousand individuals.
Speaker 13 (14:02):
So about three thousand of them South Asian, three thousand
of them approximately East Asian, and three thousandth of them
Southeast Asian. And what I saw was something stunning, and
I'd like to share that with you right now.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Then he pulls up a graph.
Speaker 13 (14:20):
What you're seeing is across these groups, on average, Indians
are aging much faster in multiple different systems their inflammation system,
their heart system, their lung system, their kidneys, their muscular
skeletal system compared to their Malay and Chinese counterparts. And
(14:41):
that is really shocking to me personally.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
The idea that Indians might be aging five years faster
feels like a warning being blaired to me? Did you
expect that when you saw this? Did you have a hunch?
Speaker 13 (15:04):
I think my expectation was that we would see Indians
aging faster, probably because our diets are unhealthy, or maybe
of colonial generational traumas that have been caused due to colonization.
But I did not expect it to be almost a
four to five year acceleration of age in systems in
(15:29):
our different organs.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
I mean that chart is insane to look at. Yes,
maybe it's because I was born in America. Maybe it's
because it's what my dad wanted us to believe. And
no matter where you start, you can outwork and outwit
your way to a better life. But no matter how
disciplined you are, no matter how many supplements or green
(15:52):
powders or workouts you get in your body answers to
a deeper code.
Speaker 13 (15:59):
The Indian popa really interestingly, has had about two hundred
years of colonization which was affected by a mass amounts
of famine. There are about sixteen different famines that happened,
which estimatedly killed close to one hundred and twenty million
(16:20):
people in that period. That's a lore of humans being killed.
The skill is huge, right.
Speaker 14 (16:31):
I'm Rashmi Rae and welcome to the Indian USA.
Speaker 15 (16:35):
For so many, colonization has been presented in a genteel
silver screen wrapping afternoon tea and cricket on the lawns,
railways and men and christ white cotton.
Speaker 16 (16:45):
We did our best to succeed, and so I'm sure
too did the leaders of the Indian peoples.
Speaker 15 (16:56):
But for the many South Asians living it, it was
invasions and extractions and economic devastation. As our source tells us,
there were twenty four major fermines from eighteen fifteen to
eighteen ninety nine, and the Bengal Fairmen of nineteen forty
three alone killed and estimated three million people. That little,
(17:18):
my god, So millions starved as food and riches were
siphoned out of the country.
Speaker 14 (17:24):
Alas for the Indian diaspora, the story didn't end with independence.
The aftershocks of British imperial rule continued to reverberate, not
only in the Indian economy but also in our bodies.
Back to Mngation Ragov, and.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
One place that shows up quite clearly to Ragov is
Inner epigenetics. Epigenetics is kind of like the software operating
over your genes, telling your body how to react. So
when it interprets all the traumas that have been passed
down to you, the things your parents suffered through, it
uses that in to give your body directions to protect itself.
(18:03):
So if your relatives suffer to famine.
Speaker 13 (18:06):
Their bodies are being told there is no food, right
that epigenetics are being told, reprogram yourself store as much
fat as you can, save your energy when you can.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Then you and your fellow survivors seem to see the
same health impacts.
Speaker 13 (18:27):
So what's really interesting is that the same trends that
we see in the South Asian populations here right around
increased risk of cardiovascular disease, increased risk of obesity, are
the exact same trends that we see in the Irish
populations that went through the Irish Famine.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
The first time I heard about epigenetics, it was about
people who had survived the Holocaust and the ways that
their kids' bodies, one generation removed, responded to that trauma.
But it isn't just one generation. As Rogev tells it,
the ripples last so much longer.
Speaker 13 (19:05):
It has been seeing that if you just put a
worm in a fasted state, it will have those variations
in the epigenettics, beaten passed down eight different generations.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Isn't colonialism the perfect metaphor for the haves and have nots?
That doctor will Meher talked about two unequal worlds occupying
the same space. And as I hear it, I think
of how maybe something happened to my great great great
grandfather where he suffered and now I have a harder
time losing belly weight. But more than that, I think
(19:43):
about the right now, all the war and devastation and
economic insecurity, and then how long that devastation will linger
in people's bloodlines. The damage we're causing to future generations
is unconscionable, heartbreaking. And that's not where it ends. The
(20:03):
health problems caused by colonialism get compounded by globalization.
Speaker 13 (20:08):
Now, post independence, there is food, right, those bodies still
remain reprogrammed, they still store fat that way. But there's
a double whammy where now you're being fed with a
Western diet which is high in fat. Right, Yeah, So
(20:30):
not only now are you reprogrammed to store fat, you're
essentially being fed a high five diet through the likes
of KFC and McDonald's and Subway. By the way, you're
soon going to be visiting India, go have a look
at it up.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
You'll be flooded. The little town and sow, India where
my grandparents settled, used to feel so isolated from the world.
For the first fifteen years of my life. Nothing seemed
(21:07):
to change there, fashion, cars, music, the TV people watched.
And now when I go back, it is unimaginable. People
eat fast food and buy prepackaged meals at the supermarket
instead of going to the market market.
Speaker 13 (21:23):
And the outcome of that is the double whammy where
our bodies are storing fat like crazy. There are people
who get diagnosed with fairy liver disease within the eighteen
to twenty two point five bmi in the Indian subcontinent,
and that to me is the most shocking part.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
It isn't long before Raga than I are reminiscing about
in India that used to be and the way lifestyle
contributes to health, the evening walks, the time reserved for friends,
the culture of siestas, which it turns out we're both
fond of.
Speaker 13 (22:04):
I'm a very nocturnal being. Personally, I love sleeping during
the day, and unfortunately people in my lab know that
they should not message me between three to five because
I'm probably taking a nap.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Chapter three, Diving in As American as I am. My
body is tethered to India, to its food, its history,
so maybe investigating my roots could reveal something. But I
couldn't force myself to buy a ticket. Lizzie kept reminding
(23:17):
me to book, watching the prices creeping up, and I
kept dragging my feet. If you talate it up. I've
spent years of my life in India, and I've gone
to go up plenty, but I've only been three times
with my dad. The first was when I was two.
My mom, sister, and I traveled out first, then he
joined us and the whole extended family took a train
(23:40):
trip because I was too and obsessed with trains, so
we traveled to Bombay, where we attended a big family
wedding together. The second was when I was in my twenties,
a father's son trip. We spent a week together. He
showed me the places he'd played in the beaches. He
loved most, the old farmhouse that my grandfather had built
(24:02):
in the mill where he'd helped his dad with little experiments,
where he'd first realized how much he'd loved science. My
dad showed me the stage where he and his sister
had written and performed plays in the backyard that had
once been six hundred acres of mango trees and a
little waterfall and a garden full of exotic, perfumed roses,
(24:22):
and now none of that. We drank fenny and coconut
water late into the night as he told stories and
we listened to Goin' songs. He was so himself there,
his best self, and I remember watching him beame every
time he got the chance to talk to a local
(24:43):
and slip into Goin'knkney, which spilled from his tongue effortlessly,
as if he'd never stopped speaking it, as if he
hadn't spent fifty years, thousands of miles away from this land.
My dad never thought twice about leaving India, but his
(25:04):
heart was always in Goa.
Speaker 7 (25:11):
No.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
So the third time I traveled to go with my dad,
I carried him there in a box. And it's the
space between those two memories, the emptiness I know I'll
feel that's been holding me back. I meet my mom
(25:57):
and my aunt child throw in Bangalore, and then we
fly to go and take a long taxi ride to
the hotel one I've booked on the beach. But even
before we get there, they have their own agenda, a
hit list of temples to visit, sights to see, cousins
to meat, plus morning walks, high teas on the veranda.
We eat breakfasts and dinners together, but they're not a
(26:18):
part of my return to health narrative. Instead, they're off
gallivanting at a dizzying cliff. But also it's exactly what
I'd hoped for. Suddenly I have time to think and
work and explore a little biohacking clinic just a half
mile down the road. I thought I'd be fine on
the walkover, I didn't realize, Yeah, Ga, I would have
(26:44):
taken a car if I knew I was setting this mud.
I'd walked past this unassuming white bungalow and then doubled back,
and I was surprised. It was pretty and understated, hidden
in the back of a neighborhood a few streets off
the main drag. But as one of the co founders
Eklavia Batcharia tells me that's very much by design.
Speaker 12 (27:06):
Alienated in India, the mentalities.
Speaker 4 (27:08):
If you're stepping into a clinic, people think you are sick, right,
So for us, we wanted to let people know that
there is no right or wrong age to take care
of yourself.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
And while the exterior might be traditional, the interior is
anything but there's AI created longevity art on the wall,
stuff that would look at home in any of the
biohacker houses. I visited shelves of vials and longevity books
and a big, long sectional to recline on, positioned in
front of a big screen TV, where a nurse can
pull up with any number of ivs. Reverse Infinity's co founders,
(27:41):
Eklavia and his brother in law, doctor Powen Rane, tell
me they offer everything you'd see at a wellness clinic
in the States, from cryptotherapy. The ivy is filled with
recovery stacks, all its significantly lower prices.
Speaker 4 (27:54):
This eighty four year old biohacking lady who came to us,
she spends six months in La and six months in
Go and she really loved Hypobetic. She did like nearly
twenty sessions with us. Yeah, eighty four year old like
with a zest of living, and she was like, a
session in La costs me three hundred dollars of hypobetic
(28:15):
Maybe I'm gonna keep my budget and I'm gonna do
like for every one session I do that, I'll do
ten over here.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Right after a quick tour and an intake exam, I
select the most popular of the therapies, the h BOT oxygen therapy,
followed by a circuit alternating sessions in the cryo chamber
and the red light room. The oxygen chamber feels like
stepping into a tiny vessel, two rows of seats and
(28:41):
an aisle in the middle, and enough leg room to
stretch out. However claustrophobic I feel when that big vault
door locks on me. I remind myself this chamber could
be a lot smaller. Most of the hpots I've seen,
like the one at Frontier Tower, look like an mritube
or an inflated sleeping bag designed for one. Before I
(29:02):
step in, the duo gives me some tips.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
So i I'm breathing out, there might be a little
moment when you feel, oh, I can't really breathe normally, right,
So hence we tell people don't normal think I'm breathing right.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
I'm not sure how I'm gonna do that. I don't
really underthink things, but I strap in. They check the locks,
oxygen starts to fill the space, and we're off. Yes,
I'm gonna live twice. I don't know about to look
on Mirabilkaki may go jool Over the course of the session,
(29:39):
I read in brainstorm a little stuck on some lozenges,
and then fall asleep, and every once in a while
I stir at the sound of an announcement.
Speaker 12 (29:53):
The last thirteen min.
Speaker 5 (29:54):
That's a possession. We have started.
Speaker 7 (29:57):
Rising back to the office.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Depresionization as happening.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
You might feel like popping in your ears, so just
add a little more cotton into your ears.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
I don't feel noticeably different after, and a Clovia tells
me that after one session you might sleep better or
feel calmer. But as the Mayo Clinic writes, the real
benefits come from cumulative sessions to treat things like gangreine,
non healing wounds or tissue injuries from radiation therapy that
could take dozens of dives. We move on to the
(30:32):
crypto chamber or the chiller, as a Clavia calls it.
Speaker 7 (30:36):
Okay.
Speaker 6 (30:37):
So as soon as you edit a skip, temperature drops
by fifteen degrees, the brain fails. Okay, what's happening, okay,
So what he'll do is all the rubbish processes like
me is growing all that stuff right, which happens twenty
four seven? They all shut. Are the body's main preugative
to access to be counts to save your inn altments. Okay.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
Clovia also tells me the cold could help me lose
weight if I do it more often.
Speaker 4 (31:03):
There's something on this cold shock protein intopog so generates heat,
so it burns your fat so that you don't feel
that cold.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
I take off my shirt and glasses they could crack
from the temperatures. I put on gloves and socks to
protect my extremities and a face mask, and they fix
the sensor to my skin to capture my body temp.
And then I step into what feels like a walk
in freezer three two.
Speaker 6 (31:34):
So no an overthink, it's not that porne. Nothing's gonna happen.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
Yeah, okay, human survive at minus fifty.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
The chamber fogs up. I think warm thoughts. I march
in place. My thicket of arm hairs is frozen, stiff
and white like frost on blades of grass. I cut
out the full five minutes.
Speaker 17 (31:55):
Now your hairs, so I'm gon show you not yet
press sure, see it.
Speaker 4 (32:08):
Wasn't that, That's what I told you, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
The cold therapy is thrilling. Maybe it's just the relief
of not being in the cold, but I feel wide awake,
honestly euphoric. I move on to the next part of
the circuit, the red light therapy room, which looks like
the scene out of a nineties rat video with these
(32:33):
tiny red dots lanning a space the size of an elevator,
and I stripped down and sit in what feels like
a futuristic sauna and experience equlavia li likens to a
mother's hug.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
Can you see these?
Speaker 6 (32:45):
Yeah? You won't be able to see these when I
switch on the other nights.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
Okay, So these are eight fourteen anime near infurred light. Right,
So your coffee, which you mentioned you will love it
like it will love it for.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
This, Okay, I'm definitely sweating, but technical what I'm doing
isn't heat therapy. It's light therapy with red and near
infrared wavelengths targeting your skin and cells. The hope is
that they activate your mitochondria into repairing more tissue and
reducing inflammation. I'm brace the light for about fifteen to
twenty minutes, then I head back to the cryo. I
(33:18):
last seven minutes the next go around, and then back
to the red light. And then my body feels new.
Whatever soreness I had from playing tennis that morning has
completely disappeared. I'm not clenching my jaw and I freely
don't for the next day, and I feel energized. When
(33:39):
I go to sleep that night, I don't stare at
the ceiling for an hour before dozing off, or wake
up repeatedly through the night. I just pass out and
have the best night's sleep I've had in months. Chapter
(34:04):
four an older answer. In India, food is love. And
one of the things that's very sweet is that whenever
I visit, often with years in between, my relatives welcome
(34:24):
me with my favorite meals. And these are four things
I love that show up on the menu a lot.
Number one song my absolute favorite. This tangy fiery potato
dish is made with chili, onions, tamar and salt, and
of course potatoes. I love it. With yogurt rice and
(34:46):
a dollup of lime pickle. Two China batura, a spicy
chickpea curry served with a huge puffed fried bread. The
bread is served fresh, and it is a joy to
pop it with your and watch it deflate. And even
though it is piping hot, I can never wait to
(35:06):
stuff it in my mouth. Three Pollock Panier. I know
this creamy spinach gravy with Panier cubes is a takeout staple,
but my grandmother's vision was so much better than the
restaurant fair and to me it tasted like heaven and
four poni pori. So this is a street food my
(35:29):
dad loved and one I didn't quite get as a kid.
It's a crispy, brittle, spherical shell. It's stuffed with tiny
potato mash that has chili powder and cumin and salt.
Sometimes there are onions sprinkled on or coriander, and then
it's filled with a spicy, tangy, minty tamer and water.
And as you stuff the entire thing in your mouth,
(35:51):
it explodes with all the flavors and textures. It's crunchy
in liquid, herbal and tart, savory and spicy and also
sweet somehow, and this tiny maximalist food it feels like
pure delicious chaos in your mouth, and yet for an
entire Indian diaspora, it tastes like joy. When I talk
(36:14):
to a book editor friend about it, she said, that's
what India is. It is everything all at once. It's
twenty six languages heard on the same street. It's the
farmer selling bananas at the rickety stall, taking Google pay,
a place where disparate ideas aren't really in competition. And
that's what I'm thinking when I take off my shoes
(36:35):
and step into another villa, one that houses a more
ancient approach to maintaining and restoring the body, the Shri
Shanti Aervea clinic.
Speaker 18 (36:47):
What did Lizzie tell you about this?
Speaker 2 (36:48):
So?
Speaker 19 (36:49):
She said, you have some health concerns, so we will
talk about that. Yeah, and along with that, the same
conversation will get recorded because that will go to a podcast.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
Jigitravindran is an Arabadic doctor in Iraa. Is this traditional
way of understanding the body through balance, digestion, climate and
also by taking into account the particular constitution you were
born with and even within irab that there are lots
of branches and specialties.
Speaker 5 (37:18):
Do you have a specific lineage or something.
Speaker 19 (37:21):
Yes, So I do practice a something called punch about
the chigasa, which I learned from my guru in Kolapur.
So in that what we do is like usually in
my practice, I check the patients in the bombings in
empty stummach attack the abdomen, I listen to the sound.
From the sound, we can understand the imbalance in the body,
(37:42):
and then we decide the medicine. That is something unique
in Iowa. It's not even written in the Iraitic textbooks.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
Part of the reason I'm here is knowing that the
Indian body is different. I'm wondering if the diets recommended
in the West are really right for me. I'd ask
Ragov about this. One of the things they often say
is like, oh, look at the Mediterranean diet. But I'm curious,
do you have any sense of you know, if we're
working this off in eight generations right, like what types
(38:11):
of foods should we be eating?
Speaker 13 (38:14):
Honestly, I don't have an answer, because we're in new territory.
I would argue almost the Mediterranean diet is really well studied.
In a Mediterranean setting, which is typically a certain genetic
background whose epigenome and genetics has not been destabilized in
a way. Right, So I would argue what we need
(38:37):
to do is sort of really go back to the
basics here. So if you were to ask me, what's
the staple in my fridge, it's actually a bowl of
somber because it's one of the healthiest things I feel. Right, Yeah,
it's lentils high in protein, it's vegetables high in fiber,
(38:59):
and it's this form of a stew, right Yeah, I
put in some Italyes, that's some good carbs right there, right,
and it's the perfect meal and it's really filling.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
Honestly, I love the idea of an excuse to eat
Italy sami area. So I'm curious what is the Mediterranean
diet for me? But as jigit reminds me, India isn't
a monoculture.
Speaker 19 (39:27):
You go to different parts of India, different state, everyone
has a different culture, Everyone has a different food culture. Now,
all this food culture is based on their geography and
their climate, so it depends on what can be cultivated
and those foods will be you know, really healthy.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Fur them Irveda doesn't present itself as a one size
fits all cure. It's more like a vast data set.
And inside that system, food has direction. It can push
you out of balance or bring you back. So do
you need foods that cool your constitution like the sweetness
of melon or the calm of buttermilk, or foods that
(40:06):
bring you heat more ginger and chili and cumin, ingredients
that flavor and meal as much as they light a
small digestifier. What have locals eaten for centuries to maximize
their health in this environment?
Speaker 19 (40:20):
We always tell that now right now you're in Goa.
The stablefood in Goa is like fish, curry and rice.
You should read that. And the vegetables which is getting
cultivated here. That is the best food to eat. That
is the one major key. Now I always guide about
changing the food according to the weather and also your
regimens according to the weather.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
I love the romantic idea of this, that you can
return to a place and feast the way locals have
done for centuries, and I know how to eat here
in Goa. But also I have no idea what this
means for me in Brooklyn? Does it mean a diet
of root vegetables and oysters? Is it pizza and bagels,
which I already know isn't working for me. But before
(41:03):
I can solve that, we're talking about my health, everything
from blood pressure, being pre diabetic, the band around my belly,
my knees and neck and shoulder pains.
Speaker 19 (41:14):
After forty you have to take care of your health,
you know, after that white default body is in the
growing stage, you can say, but at the forty that
pace will.
Speaker 5 (41:24):
Go down growing.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
I say, this is a gesture to my stomach.
Speaker 19 (41:27):
It's not growing, it's not growing this way, this way
to the side.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
She just believes I can make tweaks to make things better,
and I made the take on my untapped potential.
Speaker 19 (41:41):
So what I'm usually you have your breakfast. I don't
really have breakfast, lunch at what time? Maybe tewish being
to try to sleep, Like you don't get to sleeping.
Speaker 5 (41:56):
So like often I don't fall asleep until one or
two and average, like how long do you sleep? Probably
like five six hours. That's like if I hear something,
I'll wake up.
Speaker 3 (42:12):
For months. I've been looking for the right inventions and
the exasperating thing is everyone keeps banging on about the
importance of sleep, which sounds so simple, but also for
me is the hardest thing to figure out. Of course,
sleep is just one of the simple recommendations digit las out.
Speaker 19 (42:33):
What we say is like take a risk, eat properly,
then take the medications and apply the medicator.
Speaker 5 (42:39):
Oil on the joints.
Speaker 19 (42:41):
These four things go hand in hand, then the healing will.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
Have But maybe that's what I came to India to remember.
My body isn't some twenty four hour machine I can
upgrade with the right stack. My body comes from somewhere.
It carries a history. My father is Goa Ragov's charts,
(43:07):
colonial famines, American workaholism, airport meals, late nights, tennis, injuries,
and inherited stubbornness. I think taking care of myself might
mean taking my indianas seriously, not just as unique heritage,
but as a distinct biology. Of course, I have no
(43:28):
idea what that means in practice. Maybe it's fewer late nights,
maybe it's more Italy sombar. The clinic is closing now,
and I'm grateful for Jigit's time, so I thank him
and then race off to find a rickshaw to take
me to my mom. Chapter five, Alma, I'm.
Speaker 12 (44:39):
Gonna start birding soon.
Speaker 20 (44:41):
I had actually called the group and the guy in
charge talk to me, and he asked me to come
to the pier at something like six in the morning,
and I didn't know where the peers were and how
to get there, and I didn't.
Speaker 3 (44:53):
In goa my aunt, my mom, and I spent our
evenings feasting and laughing and gossiping and reminiscent to a
quiet soundtrack of waves lapping against the shore. We celebrated
my mom's birthday and met three different groups of cousins,
and in a blink the week was over. We hugged
(45:14):
and flew in different directions. But it's only when my
mom returned to Brooklyn, where she now lives a few
blocks away from us, that we finally got a chance
to talk. I've been worrying about her. I'm so busy
that I don't really know. Is she lonely? Is she happy?
(45:36):
How does she feel about her age and life as
she leans into seventy seven. So we pour a kettle
of Earl gray into mugs, sit across our kitchen table,
and I turn on the mic.
Speaker 18 (45:48):
When you were a kid, how old did you think
was old?
Speaker 20 (45:53):
Anything like forty? I think was old. Forty was a
big number. I'm seventy seven and I don't feel old
at all. Now I know is just in the perception.
Speaker 18 (46:06):
How do you think about aging?
Speaker 20 (46:09):
You have to have a right attitude about it and
not worry and take every day as it comes and
enjoy it to the full. There's no aging as such,
I think. I think it's in your mind. And probably
people who have health problems will have another answer.
Speaker 18 (46:26):
What do you think is a full lifetime? Like, what's
the right age?
Speaker 20 (46:30):
As long as you have health and you have your
partner living with you and your loved ones around you.
Now I've lost Umish, my love, and then I've lost
my sister in law much younger, but we were best friends.
And then a Chaitra, my friend and mentor, I lost her,
And so all the love ones that I had to
(46:51):
guide me and who could understand me and I could
speak on any subjects with them, they all gone. So
now there's no incentive.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
This is the part I was worried about. People love
my mom. The year she retired as a preschool teacher,
kids in her class cried because their siblings wouldn't have
a chance to have her. When she was on a
grand jewelry duty and the case finally ended. The woman
who sat next to her for months cried because she
was going to miss doing the crossword with her. Even
in Brooklyn, when she takes the train from Penn Station home,
(47:23):
she ends up with strays people she sat next to
who want to join her for a tea or coffee
when they get off the subway. But she's also a homebody.
She just wants to be near a garden with her
kids and a dog somewhere close by, and a few
close friends to call. And there are fewer and fewer
of those.
Speaker 12 (47:45):
You don't feel like business, No, they isn't.
Speaker 20 (47:47):
But life is is a gift and I'm going to
honor it and be happy, make myself happy. And I
have you have my children to keep me going, and
the grandchildren even more. Yeah, so there is an incentive there.
Speaker 3 (48:06):
It's been four years now, and I don't want to ask,
But also I can't stop myself.
Speaker 18 (48:14):
Do you think about that a lot?
Speaker 12 (48:15):
Yes? And every month the sixth night is very hard
for me. I ready sleep that night.
Speaker 3 (48:27):
I missed the two of them together in my teens
and twenties. They bickered so much, but then somehow I
watched them just enjoy one mother, And as the years
passed and my sister Shanta and I needed them less,
I saw them grow closer and closer.
Speaker 18 (48:47):
Would you miss.
Speaker 12 (48:50):
Everything?
Speaker 20 (48:53):
I don't feel like watching movies without him because he
used to choose them for me. Is going to Broadways
because we always had the season tickets it broadbly came
to town, the food, preparing it together.
Speaker 12 (49:09):
You always helped me. He helped me with everything.
Speaker 20 (49:13):
Yeah, companionship mainly.
Speaker 18 (49:17):
What's the thing he missed the most going to bed?
Speaker 20 (49:20):
His heart because he always helped me close when he
went to bed.
Speaker 12 (49:24):
So now I have a.
Speaker 20 (49:25):
Stuff dynamber next to me, and people wonder why I've
grown up seventy seven woman needs a stuffed animal next
to her, But that's the reason I feel.
Speaker 12 (49:35):
He's next to me.
Speaker 18 (49:37):
How old do you want to lift you?
Speaker 12 (49:42):
I hope it's within the next three years. Next three years, yeah,
I think I'd be too slow.
Speaker 20 (49:49):
I'd be too much of a dinosaur to carry on
with the world. It's going so fast, So som enjoy
the next three years thoroughly. Truck in my hands. Mom
lived to be eighty six. Dad was seventy three meeting
dead now.
Speaker 3 (50:10):
Terns listening back. I don't know why I asked this question.
Maybe it's because I could feel her world evaporating and
I wanted to believe she had things to cling onto.
My heart sinks when I hear the response, But I
guess I've spent an entire show saying I don't want
(50:31):
to live forever, and here's my mom saying the same thing,
that she just wants to have her health and enjoy
what she has left to the fullest. So I want
to know what that means. List out the things that
make you happy, that you appreciate about your life.
Speaker 20 (50:49):
Two blocks from where I live, you have Prospect Pack
and I have six hundred acres at my feet, and
then there's a library that is spent time in, and
then beyond that is the Botanic Gardens, and then I'm
a member. So when the Rosa and bloom, I go
right there, and I'm there every second week. I'm there
(51:11):
to see what's happening there. We were raised like that.
I don't know about men in India, but the girls
are raised not to ever get bored, so they teach
us all hobbies. Whether we follow them or not is
up to us. So look at me now. You always
ask me, aren't you alone? I'm not alone either. I
listen to your podcasts of music and go sit out
(51:35):
read work in the garden walk.
Speaker 12 (51:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 20 (51:38):
And then the two kids upstairs who like to be
out in the yard there, and I love their company,
take them up for ice creams now and then it's
good to spoil them. And then Henry comes to see
me often, and now when then Ruby comes, but Ruby
wants to be alone, and they come and play board
games with me, or we watch a show together. And
(52:00):
I love that when you go out at night and
we just have a movie night with them. Love that
by just getting rder because they're getting older.
Speaker 18 (52:11):
What about exercise.
Speaker 20 (52:13):
I don't go to a gym or anything here, and
yet in the evening when I check, it's twelve thousand
to seventeen thousand steps, and I don't realize that, nor
do I feel it, because I haven't done it for exercise.
I've just gone to the park and stopped to pet
all the dogs and so that all the dogs know me.
The other day there was a dog called sb Alsation
(52:36):
that I hadn't seen.
Speaker 12 (52:37):
But it's fun. I get no people because of the dogs.
Speaker 18 (52:40):
Maybe, Yeah, what do you want from me and Shampa?
Speaker 20 (52:46):
Just for both of you to have a happy life,
balance in life, balance with work and play, and work
in family, which I don't see. Somehow both of you
just get pulled into work.
Speaker 12 (53:01):
And it's not just the two of you.
Speaker 20 (53:03):
I see everybody because I don't know sometimes if the
computers are being or a boone. But I just want
to see you happy, happy in life.
Speaker 3 (53:20):
I've spent so many months asking how to live longer,
but what my mother is asking me gently is whether
I know how to live better?
Speaker 5 (53:37):
Anything else you want to say.
Speaker 20 (53:40):
Now, I just remember that life is a gift, and
never be morose about anything. Everything's fleeting. It's stratitude and
perception that keeps you going. Yeah, there's so much to
do in the world and on the.
Speaker 12 (54:19):
River the sentisoned a friends.
Speaker 8 (54:23):
All head out there.
Speaker 3 (54:26):
If you could do it all again, look that so fast?
But change is things. You could do.
Speaker 7 (54:37):
It all again, sire, Come down.
Speaker 8 (54:42):
Come downtown, Come now. I can't be.
Speaker 7 (55:11):
Life is it was like Nevers.
Speaker 3 (55:15):
I don't believe it's like nevils.
Speaker 12 (55:19):
I don't believe it now it's like Nevers.
Speaker 7 (55:23):
I don't believe it now, It's like.
Speaker 3 (55:27):
Never next time. On the final episode of How to
Live Forever.
Speaker 21 (55:43):
My body is fragile and vulnerable and that is one
of the capital t truths that folks either deny or
make them too uncomfortable to think about, and so they
try to fix with all types of hacks that just
really do anything about it.
Speaker 3 (56:17):
Credits This episode of Skylan Drive How to Live Forever
was a total family and friend's affair. The show had
written and hosted by Me Manga s particular, if you
have the same last name as me, reach out because
we are definitely related. Massive thanks to Mark Lotto, who
edited this and also spends so much time watching Doordarshan
one and two. Why Mark? Why Lizzy Jacobs, our showrunner,
(56:41):
without whom I might still be staring at a computer
debating whether or not to buy.
Speaker 5 (56:46):
My ticket to India.
Speaker 3 (56:47):
Thank you, Lizzy for giving me that shove. The one
and only Mary full of Sandy, who researched and fact
checked the heck out of the show. Where will we
be without you? Mary probably still wondering more about claviculars
You's history. Mark Steven Allen, our brilliant signs producer who
told me I had to meet Rag of you were
absolutely right. Raga was a delight. Thank you. If you
(57:09):
like the way this show sounds, it is beautiful because
of these people. Joe Plored who mixed and sound designed
the show. You both read my mind and made things
sound so gorgeous. Of Lissamsa Azzati and of course Botany,
you all lent me incredible music. Thank you so much.
I've got to give a special extra shout out to
(57:30):
Peter Matthew Bauer, my friend. The song Miracles comes from
his gorgeous, gorgeous album Flowers, which I have listened to
on repeat and you should too. This show is executive
produced from Iharp and my good friends Ali Perry, Katrina
Norvel from Kalaidyscope. We've got my co founder Ozwa listen.
Julian mutter Our head of studio, Rachel strom Our brilliant
(57:52):
lawyer and friend who is always the person you want
your corner, whether you want legal advice or secondhand pizza shirts.
Also thank you. Thank you so much to the team here,
Christy David, Dara Agna, Sheina Calypso l Viney for the
beautiful collage art. There are so many of you. I
also have to give a shout out to the kiddos
you know I do, Ruby, Julian Grendel, lu Baby Leon,
(58:15):
Baby hal Enzo and pearl Etour and of course Henry
for being so sweet about my face and reminding me
that if I just changed the direction of my hair,
I could look a little more like Ozel. I need
to thank my friends. iHeart Bob Connell, will carry Nikki, Jason,
Jerry and Moore, Also Shanta and Sara Shitra Pacci who's
sweet enough to accompany us to goa which made my trip,
(58:39):
All my family in India, all my family in the States.
Speaker 2 (58:41):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (58:42):
Before I go, I have to send special thanks to
the brilliant professor a scholar, also Lizzie's cousin who trained
at the Anti Luella School for Elocution, the inimitable rush Me, Rye,
rush Me, you are the best. Thank you so much
for doing this. Also the very biggest thanks to Lucas Adams,
founder an editor of the New York Review of Comics,
with whom I will be eating those caramelized sweet potatoes
(59:05):
very soon, I promise. And just one last thank you
to my Amma, my dad, Lali Thanomische tikother who keep
looking out for me even when I'm trying to look
out for them. Thank you so much for listening.
Hey, it's Lucas Adams from New York Review Comics here
with a warning, warning, warning warning. Despite Mangesh's grandmother's greatest wish,
he is one hundred percent not a doctor and nothing
in this episode should count as medical advice. Absolutely nothing. Also,
Mangesh finish the show already so we can go get
roasted sweet potatoes at h Mart. They get all caramelized.
(00:33):
Enjoy sodic.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Sud so my god, t other throesome to awesome, toroesome, torossome.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Episode six untapped potential aush.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
So we have started on this end, so we are
currently around six feet BELOWSI eleven. The aim of today's
session is take through to at least thirty three.
Speaker 5 (01:27):
Feet below level.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
It's late February two thirty in the afternoon. I'm in Goa,
sitting behind a locked hatch, looking through a porthole window,
and I'm six feet below an imaginary see.
Speaker 6 (01:41):
Just a rim of trivial.
Speaker 7 (01:42):
A hyperbetic session is actually.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
Known as a dive.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
There's a beach a half mile away, coconut water, and
a book I could be reading, but I met Reverse Infinity,
a self described biohacking lib and advanced wellness clinic in India,
finally trying hyperbaric oxygen in therapy. My body is being
flooded with oxygen, and for the first time, I don't
feel like a longevity tourist from the inside of this
(02:08):
makeshift submarine. I feel like a longevity On the other hand,
A fun fact about me, I'm mildly claustrophobic. So ever
since the door closed and I started this dive, my
heart's been racing. I breathe and slowly. I swallow hard
to unclock my ears, and I wonder if signing up
(02:30):
for a ninety minute session was really a good idea.
Speaker 6 (02:34):
How don't you ask me before why pushing for one?
Speaker 7 (02:38):
Bob feeling actually begins at one bottle fresh to get
the up like.
Speaker 8 (02:46):
We all best trying to take to the idea.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
As I sit in the chamber, diving deeper and deeper,
I think about what's happening inside my body, how my
lungs are taking in much more oxygen than normal, how
that extra oxygen is dissolving into my plasma, reaching tissues
that are injured or inflamed. I wonder if the session
will help my tennis elbow or stiff neck, or if
(03:15):
it will leave me feeling sharper. That's what so many
longevity enthusiasts say it does. I daydream about the possibilities,
and my eyelids grow heavy, and I smile. I think
how happy I am to be here. How I almost
didn't make this trip. How I thought about canceling or
(03:35):
pushing it off one more time, not because I'm afraid
of death, but because I wasn't sure if I could
stomach thinking about it again.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
We'll get I'm just telling you again, I thought you
were kind of got to that. You're right now breathing
mary thirty to forty liters per minute or oxygen. I
don't ada wonder story anymore.
Speaker 5 (04:01):
Sent back, relax, and I have a great.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Session from Validoscope. And iHeart podcasts. I am Monga's particularly
This is how to Live Forever, Chapter one, free console.
Speaker 9 (04:54):
So it goes from lt N, which is low to
your normy right HDN, and then after that there's Chad
true Chad.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Over the past few months, I've talked to investors and
longevenots and frontier scientists with incredible and outrageous ideas about
how to live forever. But perhaps my most disturbing interview
is happening right now with my son, Henry. I've just
learned that Henry and all the other fifteen year old
boys in his grade are low key obsessed with looks, maxing.
Speaker 9 (05:28):
The maiden guy that kind of leads this is clovicular.
They analyze a lot of very like minute details about people, right,
like bone structure.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Right.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Henry and his pals have been watching clav as. They
call him this manisphere beauty streamer slash influencer who's taken
the Internet by storm. They drop code words with the
surprising fluency. They declare themselves super chads, and they fall
over themselves laughing, ranking each other's jawline. So I'm sitting
on my bed trying to figure out how seriously to
(06:04):
take Henry.
Speaker 5 (06:06):
So tell me about myself.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
I'm obviously in my mid to late forties, and where
on a scale, like how would you analyze my face?
Speaker 9 (06:16):
I think I'd give you EMPTN HTN, Right, what's MTN
is mid tier normy? Right, You're better than the load
to your normies.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
On the one hand, talking to my kid like this
is a delight. I'm laughing because he's ridiculous and funny,
and I like getting a peek into his world. And
on the other I'm struggling with this very modern parenting
experience where you listen to your kids spout things they
heard on the internet, and you can never quite tell
what they believe and when they're being mischievous. So just
(06:52):
when I want to start explaining to him the repulsive
origins of looksmaxing, this word that's now used everywhere from
TikTok to the New York Times, he seems to be
ahead of me.
Speaker 9 (07:04):
There's a good amount of anti Semitism in the looks
Max and community. A little bit of it kind of
derives from when Hitler used to give rin examples of
people and how they looked better. Right, So you seem
to have a longer nose, so they probably would give
you a little less credit.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
So he gets it, the cruel mix that creates these
standards of what health their beauty looks like. But I
keep getting blindsided here.
Speaker 9 (07:35):
You seem to have a square face, or as Clave described,
someone with a wider face shape like Donald Trump.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Donald Trump, No.
Speaker 9 (07:48):
I don't, It's just he said that in his example,
people with a wider face shape tend to be smarter
or more intellectual.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
It's notable that Clave's face analysis includes Trump as a
paragon of intelligence. Henry, on the other hand, is joking
around at least, I hope. But then he's got some
tips for me.
Speaker 9 (08:11):
Okay, I see that you have creases.
Speaker 10 (08:15):
I think you should try doing some facial exercises to
make it go away. I suggest wearing glasses more to
make your face look more symmetrical.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
I don't know what he's talking about. I do wear
glasses all the time.
Speaker 9 (08:32):
And i'd say probably start bone smashing.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Clavicular has gotten endless press for telling his followers to
use a hammer to bang their jaws and brows to
reshape their facial lines and make themselves more attractive.
Speaker 5 (08:46):
That doesn't work.
Speaker 11 (08:47):
Make it look more defined, they say it works.
Speaker 12 (08:51):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Class also told his followers that using meth is a
good way to suppress your appetite and to stay lean.
Henry also thought he's people to try crack, but it
turns out that clav tried it but thinks that quote
kind of sucks.
Speaker 11 (09:07):
They suggest doing crack to make you less hungry and
lower your fat percentage because it feeds off of you.
And apparently Clovicular has also done meth, as he stated
on a podcast.
Speaker 5 (09:23):
That's generally arrested me for not looking great.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Yeah, but yeah and destroying your life.
Speaker 7 (09:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
And then he gives me a knowing smile, the kind
I know so well, the kind where it's so wide
he can't stop from grinning because he knows what he's
saying is ridiculous. And in this moment, I feel grateful.
For a long time, I didn't want kids because I
(09:52):
was worried about what I'd passed down, my quirks, my anxieties,
the imperfections of my own body that had a high
likely of showing up in his. I wasn't sure it
was fair to saddle someone with that, But I'm comforted
by some of the things he did Inherit the same
streak I have and that my dad had, where ninety
nine people in a room might be giving you the
(10:14):
same advice, but you can't be convinced because you only
trust your gut. So I know my sweet and weird
and funny kid won't be bone smashing. So people are
taking crack and doing cren Yes, yes, well I've made
prefer math, but looks back to boards chatter about crack too.
Speaker 7 (10:36):
If you want to do crack.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (10:38):
You don't okay, you think I want to do crack.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Plus he can't stop himself from being nice to me,
even if he's still raiding my face.
Speaker 12 (10:49):
But I felt like.
Speaker 9 (10:50):
You're kind of HTN.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Because HTN high tear Normy.
Speaker 9 (10:56):
Well, you have on tap potential right.
Speaker 12 (11:00):
How coarse?
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Chapter two Inheritance Tax.
Speaker 13 (11:20):
I think Frankenstein is the perfect example of building a
longevity monster. This monster never ages. He built it through
building different organs and made him alive through nothing. I
don't think I want to be Frankenstein.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
That's another thing I want. That's ragav Segel. We just met,
but I already feel like we have a lot in common.
He doesn't want to be Frankenstein, and I don't want
to be Frankenstein's monster. Raga is a longevity researcher, investor
and faculty at Yale, and he's young to hold so
many positions, just about thirty. He's got a great smile
(11:57):
and a warmth to him, and right now he's it's
excited to tell me about a new aging clock he
helped invent called systems Age.
Speaker 13 (12:05):
We built this sort of model of biomarkers which can
capture aging in different organs of your body from a
single blood test.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
AGE clocks are a big deal in the longevity space,
and everyone is raising to find a more accurate one. Still,
I can't help but think about another scientist. His work
reminds me of I'm sure this gets brought up a lot,
but the idea of like a single drop being the
answer to all this like feels very theropose.
Speaker 5 (12:32):
Like.
Speaker 13 (12:32):
Ah, I'll like extend the joke for you there, Okay.
I I love wearing black turtlenecks and I was on
fobes thirty under thirty. So my labmates pull my leg
all the time about the tyranose choke. But the science
(12:54):
is real in this case.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
Unlike most DNA metaalation clocks, which try to determine how
old your body is in one fell swoop systems, AGE
uses the single blood test to estimate how old you
are based on the individual ages of each of eleven
different systems in your body your heart, your liver, brain, hormones,
metabolism and more. In the meantime, I have another question
(13:20):
because Ragov was born and raised in Delhi and I
haven't met a lot of Indian researchers in the longevity space.
I'm curious about things like high blood pressure, heart attacks, diabetes,
that skinny fat tire around Indian men's bellies, because these
are all very Indian conditions. As you look at the
South Asian body, what are you analyzing? What are you understanding?
Speaker 13 (13:44):
Let me start by seeing there has been little to
no understanding of the South Asian body in the context
of aging, which is unfortunately just sad.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
So Ragov goes hunting and eventually finds an incredible bank
of data in Singapore which is documented over nine thousand individuals.
Speaker 13 (14:02):
So about three thousand of them South Asian, three thousand
of them approximately East Asian, and three thousandth of them
Southeast Asian. And what I saw was something stunning, and
I'd like to share that with you right now.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Then he pulls up a graph.
Speaker 13 (14:20):
What you're seeing is across these groups, on average, Indians
are aging much faster in multiple different systems their inflammation system,
their heart system, their lung system, their kidneys, their muscular
skeletal system compared to their Malay and Chinese counterparts. And
(14:41):
that is really shocking to me personally.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
The idea that Indians might be aging five years faster
feels like a warning being blaired to me? Did you
expect that when you saw this? Did you have a hunch?
Speaker 13 (15:04):
I think my expectation was that we would see Indians
aging faster, probably because our diets are unhealthy, or maybe
of colonial generational traumas that have been caused due to colonization.
But I did not expect it to be almost a
four to five year acceleration of age in systems in
(15:29):
our different organs.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
I mean that chart is insane to look at. Yes,
maybe it's because I was born in America. Maybe it's
because it's what my dad wanted us to believe. And
no matter where you start, you can outwork and outwit
your way to a better life. But no matter how
disciplined you are, no matter how many supplements or green
(15:52):
powders or workouts you get in your body answers to
a deeper code.
Speaker 13 (15:59):
The Indian popa really interestingly, has had about two hundred
years of colonization which was affected by a mass amounts
of famine. There are about sixteen different famines that happened,
which estimatedly killed close to one hundred and twenty million
(16:20):
people in that period. That's a lore of humans being killed.
The skill is huge, right.
Speaker 14 (16:31):
I'm Rashmi Rae and welcome to the Indian USA.
Speaker 15 (16:35):
For so many, colonization has been presented in a genteel
silver screen wrapping afternoon tea and cricket on the lawns,
railways and men and christ white cotton.
Speaker 16 (16:45):
We did our best to succeed, and so I'm sure
too did the leaders of the Indian peoples.
Speaker 15 (16:56):
But for the many South Asians living it, it was
invasions and extractions and economic devastation. As our source tells us,
there were twenty four major fermines from eighteen fifteen to
eighteen ninety nine, and the Bengal Fairmen of nineteen forty
three alone killed and estimated three million people. That little,
(17:18):
my god, So millions starved as food and riches were
siphoned out of the country.
Speaker 14 (17:24):
Alas for the Indian diaspora, the story didn't end with independence.
The aftershocks of British imperial rule continued to reverberate, not
only in the Indian economy but also in our bodies.
Back to Mngation Ragov, and.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
One place that shows up quite clearly to Ragov is
Inner epigenetics. Epigenetics is kind of like the software operating
over your genes, telling your body how to react. So
when it interprets all the traumas that have been passed
down to you, the things your parents suffered through, it
uses that in to give your body directions to protect itself.
(18:03):
So if your relatives suffer to famine.
Speaker 13 (18:06):
Their bodies are being told there is no food, right
that epigenetics are being told, reprogram yourself store as much
fat as you can, save your energy when you can.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Then you and your fellow survivors seem to see the
same health impacts.
Speaker 13 (18:27):
So what's really interesting is that the same trends that
we see in the South Asian populations here right around
increased risk of cardiovascular disease, increased risk of obesity, are
the exact same trends that we see in the Irish
populations that went through the Irish Famine.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
The first time I heard about epigenetics, it was about
people who had survived the Holocaust and the ways that
their kids' bodies, one generation removed, responded to that trauma.
But it isn't just one generation. As Rogev tells it,
the ripples last so much longer.
Speaker 13 (19:05):
It has been seeing that if you just put a
worm in a fasted state, it will have those variations
in the epigenettics, beaten passed down eight different generations.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Isn't colonialism the perfect metaphor for the haves and have nots?
That doctor will Meher talked about two unequal worlds occupying
the same space. And as I hear it, I think
of how maybe something happened to my great great great
grandfather where he suffered and now I have a harder
time losing belly weight. But more than that, I think
(19:43):
about the right now, all the war and devastation and
economic insecurity, and then how long that devastation will linger
in people's bloodlines. The damage we're causing to future generations
is unconscionable, heartbreaking. And that's not where it ends. The
(20:03):
health problems caused by colonialism get compounded by globalization.
Speaker 13 (20:08):
Now, post independence, there is food, right, those bodies still
remain reprogrammed, they still store fat that way. But there's
a double whammy where now you're being fed with a
Western diet which is high in fat. Right, Yeah, So
(20:30):
not only now are you reprogrammed to store fat, you're
essentially being fed a high five diet through the likes
of KFC and McDonald's and Subway. By the way, you're
soon going to be visiting India, go have a look
at it up.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
You'll be flooded. The little town and sow, India where
my grandparents settled, used to feel so isolated from the world.
For the first fifteen years of my life. Nothing seemed
(21:07):
to change there, fashion, cars, music, the TV people watched.
And now when I go back, it is unimaginable. People
eat fast food and buy prepackaged meals at the supermarket
instead of going to the market market.
Speaker 13 (21:23):
And the outcome of that is the double whammy where
our bodies are storing fat like crazy. There are people
who get diagnosed with fairy liver disease within the eighteen
to twenty two point five bmi in the Indian subcontinent,
and that to me is the most shocking part.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
It isn't long before Raga than I are reminiscing about
in India that used to be and the way lifestyle
contributes to health, the evening walks, the time reserved for friends,
the culture of siestas, which it turns out we're both
fond of.
Speaker 13 (22:04):
I'm a very nocturnal being. Personally, I love sleeping during
the day, and unfortunately people in my lab know that
they should not message me between three to five because
I'm probably taking a nap.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Chapter three, Diving in As American as I am. My
body is tethered to India, to its food, its history,
so maybe investigating my roots could reveal something. But I
couldn't force myself to buy a ticket. Lizzie kept reminding
(23:17):
me to book, watching the prices creeping up, and I
kept dragging my feet. If you talate it up. I've
spent years of my life in India, and I've gone
to go up plenty, but I've only been three times
with my dad. The first was when I was two.
My mom, sister, and I traveled out first, then he
joined us and the whole extended family took a train
(23:40):
trip because I was too and obsessed with trains, so
we traveled to Bombay, where we attended a big family
wedding together. The second was when I was in my twenties,
a father's son trip. We spent a week together. He
showed me the places he'd played in the beaches. He
loved most, the old farmhouse that my grandfather had built
(24:02):
in the mill where he'd helped his dad with little experiments,
where he'd first realized how much he'd loved science. My
dad showed me the stage where he and his sister
had written and performed plays in the backyard that had
once been six hundred acres of mango trees and a
little waterfall and a garden full of exotic, perfumed roses,
(24:22):
and now none of that. We drank fenny and coconut
water late into the night as he told stories and
we listened to Goin' songs. He was so himself there,
his best self, and I remember watching him beame every
time he got the chance to talk to a local
(24:43):
and slip into Goin'knkney, which spilled from his tongue effortlessly,
as if he'd never stopped speaking it, as if he
hadn't spent fifty years, thousands of miles away from this land.
My dad never thought twice about leaving India, but his
(25:04):
heart was always in Goa.
Speaker 7 (25:11):
No.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
So the third time I traveled to go with my dad,
I carried him there in a box. And it's the
space between those two memories, the emptiness I know I'll
feel that's been holding me back. I meet my mom
(25:57):
and my aunt child throw in Bangalore, and then we
fly to go and take a long taxi ride to
the hotel one I've booked on the beach. But even
before we get there, they have their own agenda, a
hit list of temples to visit, sights to see, cousins
to meat, plus morning walks, high teas on the veranda.
We eat breakfasts and dinners together, but they're not a
(26:18):
part of my return to health narrative. Instead, they're off
gallivanting at a dizzying cliff. But also it's exactly what
I'd hoped for. Suddenly I have time to think and
work and explore a little biohacking clinic just a half
mile down the road. I thought I'd be fine on
the walkover, I didn't realize, Yeah, Ga, I would have
(26:44):
taken a car if I knew I was setting this mud.
I'd walked past this unassuming white bungalow and then doubled back,
and I was surprised. It was pretty and understated, hidden
in the back of a neighborhood a few streets off
the main drag. But as one of the co founders
Eklavia Batcharia tells me that's very much by design.
Speaker 12 (27:06):
Alienated in India, the mentalities.
Speaker 4 (27:08):
If you're stepping into a clinic, people think you are sick, right,
So for us, we wanted to let people know that
there is no right or wrong age to take care
of yourself.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
And while the exterior might be traditional, the interior is
anything but there's AI created longevity art on the wall,
stuff that would look at home in any of the
biohacker houses. I visited shelves of vials and longevity books
and a big, long sectional to recline on, positioned in
front of a big screen TV, where a nurse can
pull up with any number of ivs. Reverse Infinity's co founders,
(27:41):
Eklavia and his brother in law, doctor Powen Rane, tell
me they offer everything you'd see at a wellness clinic
in the States, from cryptotherapy. The ivy is filled with
recovery stacks, all its significantly lower prices.
Speaker 4 (27:54):
This eighty four year old biohacking lady who came to us,
she spends six months in La and six months in
Go and she really loved Hypobetic. She did like nearly
twenty sessions with us. Yeah, eighty four year old like
with a zest of living, and she was like, a
session in La costs me three hundred dollars of hypobetic
(28:15):
Maybe I'm gonna keep my budget and I'm gonna do
like for every one session I do that, I'll do
ten over here.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Right after a quick tour and an intake exam, I
select the most popular of the therapies, the h BOT oxygen therapy,
followed by a circuit alternating sessions in the cryo chamber
and the red light room. The oxygen chamber feels like
stepping into a tiny vessel, two rows of seats and
(28:41):
an aisle in the middle, and enough leg room to
stretch out. However claustrophobic I feel when that big vault
door locks on me. I remind myself this chamber could
be a lot smaller. Most of the hpots I've seen,
like the one at Frontier Tower, look like an mritube
or an inflated sleeping bag designed for one. Before I
(29:02):
step in, the duo gives me some tips.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
So i I'm breathing out, there might be a little
moment when you feel, oh, I can't really breathe normally, right,
So hence we tell people don't normal think I'm breathing right.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
I'm not sure how I'm gonna do that. I don't
really underthink things, but I strap in. They check the locks,
oxygen starts to fill the space, and we're off. Yes,
I'm gonna live twice. I don't know about to look
on Mirabilkaki may go jool Over the course of the session,
(29:39):
I read in brainstorm a little stuck on some lozenges,
and then fall asleep, and every once in a while
I stir at the sound of an announcement.
Speaker 12 (29:53):
The last thirteen min.
Speaker 5 (29:54):
That's a possession. We have started.
Speaker 7 (29:57):
Rising back to the office.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Depresionization as happening.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
You might feel like popping in your ears, so just
add a little more cotton into your ears.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
I don't feel noticeably different after, and a Clovia tells
me that after one session you might sleep better or
feel calmer. But as the Mayo Clinic writes, the real
benefits come from cumulative sessions to treat things like gangreine,
non healing wounds or tissue injuries from radiation therapy that
could take dozens of dives. We move on to the
(30:32):
crypto chamber or the chiller, as a Clavia calls it.
Speaker 7 (30:36):
Okay.
Speaker 6 (30:37):
So as soon as you edit a skip, temperature drops
by fifteen degrees, the brain fails. Okay, what's happening, okay,
So what he'll do is all the rubbish processes like
me is growing all that stuff right, which happens twenty
four seven? They all shut. Are the body's main preugative
to access to be counts to save your inn altments. Okay.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
Clovia also tells me the cold could help me lose
weight if I do it more often.
Speaker 4 (31:03):
There's something on this cold shock protein intopog so generates heat,
so it burns your fat so that you don't feel
that cold.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
I take off my shirt and glasses they could crack
from the temperatures. I put on gloves and socks to
protect my extremities and a face mask, and they fix
the sensor to my skin to capture my body temp.
And then I step into what feels like a walk
in freezer three two.
Speaker 6 (31:34):
So no an overthink, it's not that porne. Nothing's gonna happen.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
Yeah, okay, human survive at minus fifty.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
The chamber fogs up. I think warm thoughts. I march
in place. My thicket of arm hairs is frozen, stiff
and white like frost on blades of grass. I cut
out the full five minutes.
Speaker 17 (31:55):
Now your hairs, so I'm gon show you not yet
press sure, see it.
Speaker 4 (32:08):
Wasn't that, That's what I told you, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
The cold therapy is thrilling. Maybe it's just the relief
of not being in the cold, but I feel wide awake,
honestly euphoric. I move on to the next part of
the circuit, the red light therapy room, which looks like
the scene out of a nineties rat video with these
(32:33):
tiny red dots lanning a space the size of an elevator,
and I stripped down and sit in what feels like
a futuristic sauna and experience equlavia li likens to a
mother's hug.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
Can you see these?
Speaker 6 (32:45):
Yeah? You won't be able to see these when I
switch on the other nights.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
Okay, So these are eight fourteen anime near infurred light. Right,
So your coffee, which you mentioned you will love it
like it will love it for.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
This, Okay, I'm definitely sweating, but technical what I'm doing
isn't heat therapy. It's light therapy with red and near
infrared wavelengths targeting your skin and cells. The hope is
that they activate your mitochondria into repairing more tissue and
reducing inflammation. I'm brace the light for about fifteen to
twenty minutes, then I head back to the cryo. I
(33:18):
last seven minutes the next go around, and then back
to the red light. And then my body feels new.
Whatever soreness I had from playing tennis that morning has
completely disappeared. I'm not clenching my jaw and I freely
don't for the next day, and I feel energized. When
(33:39):
I go to sleep that night, I don't stare at
the ceiling for an hour before dozing off, or wake
up repeatedly through the night. I just pass out and
have the best night's sleep I've had in months. Chapter
(34:04):
four an older answer. In India, food is love. And
one of the things that's very sweet is that whenever
I visit, often with years in between, my relatives welcome
(34:24):
me with my favorite meals. And these are four things
I love that show up on the menu a lot.
Number one song my absolute favorite. This tangy fiery potato
dish is made with chili, onions, tamar and salt, and
of course potatoes. I love it. With yogurt rice and
(34:46):
a dollup of lime pickle. Two China batura, a spicy
chickpea curry served with a huge puffed fried bread. The
bread is served fresh, and it is a joy to
pop it with your and watch it deflate. And even
though it is piping hot, I can never wait to
(35:06):
stuff it in my mouth. Three Pollock Panier. I know
this creamy spinach gravy with Panier cubes is a takeout staple,
but my grandmother's vision was so much better than the
restaurant fair and to me it tasted like heaven and
four poni pori. So this is a street food my
(35:29):
dad loved and one I didn't quite get as a kid.
It's a crispy, brittle, spherical shell. It's stuffed with tiny
potato mash that has chili powder and cumin and salt.
Sometimes there are onions sprinkled on or coriander, and then
it's filled with a spicy, tangy, minty tamer and water.
And as you stuff the entire thing in your mouth,
(35:51):
it explodes with all the flavors and textures. It's crunchy
in liquid, herbal and tart, savory and spicy and also
sweet somehow, and this tiny maximalist food it feels like
pure delicious chaos in your mouth, and yet for an
entire Indian diaspora, it tastes like joy. When I talk
(36:14):
to a book editor friend about it, she said, that's
what India is. It is everything all at once. It's
twenty six languages heard on the same street. It's the
farmer selling bananas at the rickety stall, taking Google pay,
a place where disparate ideas aren't really in competition. And
that's what I'm thinking when I take off my shoes
(36:35):
and step into another villa, one that houses a more
ancient approach to maintaining and restoring the body, the Shri
Shanti Aervea clinic.
Speaker 18 (36:47):
What did Lizzie tell you about this?
Speaker 2 (36:48):
So?
Speaker 19 (36:49):
She said, you have some health concerns, so we will
talk about that. Yeah, and along with that, the same
conversation will get recorded because that will go to a podcast.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
Jigitravindran is an Arabadic doctor in Iraa. Is this traditional
way of understanding the body through balance, digestion, climate and
also by taking into account the particular constitution you were
born with and even within irab that there are lots
of branches and specialties.
Speaker 5 (37:18):
Do you have a specific lineage or something.
Speaker 19 (37:21):
Yes, So I do practice a something called punch about
the chigasa, which I learned from my guru in Kolapur.
So in that what we do is like usually in
my practice, I check the patients in the bombings in
empty stummach attack the abdomen, I listen to the sound.
From the sound, we can understand the imbalance in the body,
(37:42):
and then we decide the medicine. That is something unique
in Iowa. It's not even written in the Iraitic textbooks.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
Part of the reason I'm here is knowing that the
Indian body is different. I'm wondering if the diets recommended
in the West are really right for me. I'd ask
Ragov about this. One of the things they often say
is like, oh, look at the Mediterranean diet. But I'm curious,
do you have any sense of you know, if we're
working this off in eight generations right, like what types
(38:11):
of foods should we be eating?
Speaker 13 (38:14):
Honestly, I don't have an answer, because we're in new territory.
I would argue almost the Mediterranean diet is really well studied.
In a Mediterranean setting, which is typically a certain genetic
background whose epigenome and genetics has not been destabilized in
a way. Right, So I would argue what we need
(38:37):
to do is sort of really go back to the
basics here. So if you were to ask me, what's
the staple in my fridge, it's actually a bowl of
somber because it's one of the healthiest things I feel. Right, Yeah,
it's lentils high in protein, it's vegetables high in fiber,
(38:59):
and it's this form of a stew, right Yeah, I
put in some Italyes, that's some good carbs right there, right,
and it's the perfect meal and it's really filling.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
Honestly, I love the idea of an excuse to eat
Italy sami area. So I'm curious what is the Mediterranean
diet for me? But as jigit reminds me, India isn't
a monoculture.
Speaker 19 (39:27):
You go to different parts of India, different state, everyone
has a different culture, Everyone has a different food culture. Now,
all this food culture is based on their geography and
their climate, so it depends on what can be cultivated
and those foods will be you know, really healthy.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Fur them Irveda doesn't present itself as a one size
fits all cure. It's more like a vast data set.
And inside that system, food has direction. It can push
you out of balance or bring you back. So do
you need foods that cool your constitution like the sweetness
of melon or the calm of buttermilk, or foods that
(40:06):
bring you heat more ginger and chili and cumin, ingredients
that flavor and meal as much as they light a
small digestifier. What have locals eaten for centuries to maximize
their health in this environment?
Speaker 19 (40:20):
We always tell that now right now you're in Goa.
The stablefood in Goa is like fish, curry and rice.
You should read that. And the vegetables which is getting
cultivated here. That is the best food to eat. That
is the one major key. Now I always guide about
changing the food according to the weather and also your
regimens according to the weather.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
I love the romantic idea of this, that you can
return to a place and feast the way locals have
done for centuries, and I know how to eat here
in Goa. But also I have no idea what this
means for me in Brooklyn? Does it mean a diet
of root vegetables and oysters? Is it pizza and bagels,
which I already know isn't working for me. But before
(41:03):
I can solve that, we're talking about my health, everything
from blood pressure, being pre diabetic, the band around my belly,
my knees and neck and shoulder pains.
Speaker 19 (41:14):
After forty you have to take care of your health,
you know, after that white default body is in the
growing stage, you can say, but at the forty that
pace will.
Speaker 5 (41:24):
Go down growing.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
I say, this is a gesture to my stomach.
Speaker 19 (41:27):
It's not growing, it's not growing this way, this way
to the side.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
She just believes I can make tweaks to make things better,
and I made the take on my untapped potential.
Speaker 19 (41:41):
So what I'm usually you have your breakfast. I don't
really have breakfast, lunch at what time? Maybe tewish being
to try to sleep, Like you don't get to sleeping.
Speaker 5 (41:56):
So like often I don't fall asleep until one or
two and average, like how long do you sleep? Probably
like five six hours. That's like if I hear something,
I'll wake up.
Speaker 3 (42:12):
For months. I've been looking for the right inventions and
the exasperating thing is everyone keeps banging on about the
importance of sleep, which sounds so simple, but also for
me is the hardest thing to figure out. Of course,
sleep is just one of the simple recommendations digit las out.
Speaker 19 (42:33):
What we say is like take a risk, eat properly,
then take the medications and apply the medicator.
Speaker 5 (42:39):
Oil on the joints.
Speaker 19 (42:41):
These four things go hand in hand, then the healing will.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
Have But maybe that's what I came to India to remember.
My body isn't some twenty four hour machine I can
upgrade with the right stack. My body comes from somewhere.
It carries a history. My father is Goa Ragov's charts,
(43:07):
colonial famines, American workaholism, airport meals, late nights, tennis, injuries,
and inherited stubbornness. I think taking care of myself might
mean taking my indianas seriously, not just as unique heritage,
but as a distinct biology. Of course, I have no
(43:28):
idea what that means in practice. Maybe it's fewer late nights,
maybe it's more Italy sombar. The clinic is closing now,
and I'm grateful for Jigit's time, so I thank him
and then race off to find a rickshaw to take
me to my mom. Chapter five, Alma, I'm.
Speaker 12 (44:39):
Gonna start birding soon.
Speaker 20 (44:41):
I had actually called the group and the guy in
charge talk to me, and he asked me to come
to the pier at something like six in the morning,
and I didn't know where the peers were and how
to get there, and I didn't.
Speaker 3 (44:53):
In goa my aunt, my mom, and I spent our
evenings feasting and laughing and gossiping and reminiscent to a
quiet soundtrack of waves lapping against the shore. We celebrated
my mom's birthday and met three different groups of cousins,
and in a blink the week was over. We hugged
(45:14):
and flew in different directions. But it's only when my
mom returned to Brooklyn, where she now lives a few
blocks away from us, that we finally got a chance
to talk. I've been worrying about her. I'm so busy
that I don't really know. Is she lonely? Is she happy?
(45:36):
How does she feel about her age and life as
she leans into seventy seven. So we pour a kettle
of Earl gray into mugs, sit across our kitchen table,
and I turn on the mic.
Speaker 18 (45:48):
When you were a kid, how old did you think
was old?
Speaker 20 (45:53):
Anything like forty? I think was old. Forty was a
big number. I'm seventy seven and I don't feel old
at all. Now I know is just in the perception.
Speaker 18 (46:06):
How do you think about aging?
Speaker 20 (46:09):
You have to have a right attitude about it and
not worry and take every day as it comes and
enjoy it to the full. There's no aging as such,
I think. I think it's in your mind. And probably
people who have health problems will have another answer.
Speaker 18 (46:26):
What do you think is a full lifetime? Like, what's
the right age?
Speaker 20 (46:30):
As long as you have health and you have your
partner living with you and your loved ones around you.
Now I've lost Umish, my love, and then I've lost
my sister in law much younger, but we were best friends.
And then a Chaitra, my friend and mentor, I lost her,
And so all the love ones that I had to
(46:51):
guide me and who could understand me and I could
speak on any subjects with them, they all gone. So
now there's no incentive.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
This is the part I was worried about. People love
my mom. The year she retired as a preschool teacher,
kids in her class cried because their siblings wouldn't have
a chance to have her. When she was on a
grand jewelry duty and the case finally ended. The woman
who sat next to her for months cried because she
was going to miss doing the crossword with her. Even
in Brooklyn, when she takes the train from Penn Station home,
(47:23):
she ends up with strays people she sat next to
who want to join her for a tea or coffee
when they get off the subway. But she's also a homebody.
She just wants to be near a garden with her
kids and a dog somewhere close by, and a few
close friends to call. And there are fewer and fewer
of those.
Speaker 12 (47:45):
You don't feel like business, No, they isn't.
Speaker 20 (47:47):
But life is is a gift and I'm going to
honor it and be happy, make myself happy. And I
have you have my children to keep me going, and
the grandchildren even more. Yeah, so there is an incentive there.
Speaker 3 (48:06):
It's been four years now, and I don't want to ask,
But also I can't stop myself.
Speaker 18 (48:14):
Do you think about that a lot?
Speaker 12 (48:15):
Yes? And every month the sixth night is very hard
for me. I ready sleep that night.
Speaker 3 (48:27):
I missed the two of them together in my teens
and twenties. They bickered so much, but then somehow I
watched them just enjoy one mother, And as the years
passed and my sister Shanta and I needed them less,
I saw them grow closer and closer.
Speaker 18 (48:47):
Would you miss.
Speaker 12 (48:50):
Everything?
Speaker 20 (48:53):
I don't feel like watching movies without him because he
used to choose them for me. Is going to Broadways
because we always had the season tickets it broadbly came
to town, the food, preparing it together.
Speaker 12 (49:09):
You always helped me. He helped me with everything.
Speaker 20 (49:13):
Yeah, companionship mainly.
Speaker 18 (49:17):
What's the thing he missed the most going to bed?
Speaker 20 (49:20):
His heart because he always helped me close when he
went to bed.
Speaker 12 (49:24):
So now I have a.
Speaker 20 (49:25):
Stuff dynamber next to me, and people wonder why I've
grown up seventy seven woman needs a stuffed animal next
to her, But that's the reason I feel.
Speaker 12 (49:35):
He's next to me.
Speaker 18 (49:37):
How old do you want to lift you?
Speaker 12 (49:42):
I hope it's within the next three years. Next three years, yeah,
I think I'd be too slow.
Speaker 20 (49:49):
I'd be too much of a dinosaur to carry on
with the world. It's going so fast, So som enjoy
the next three years thoroughly. Truck in my hands. Mom
lived to be eighty six. Dad was seventy three meeting
dead now.
Speaker 3 (50:10):
Terns listening back. I don't know why I asked this question.
Maybe it's because I could feel her world evaporating and
I wanted to believe she had things to cling onto.
My heart sinks when I hear the response, But I
guess I've spent an entire show saying I don't want
(50:31):
to live forever, and here's my mom saying the same thing,
that she just wants to have her health and enjoy
what she has left to the fullest. So I want
to know what that means. List out the things that
make you happy, that you appreciate about your life.
Speaker 20 (50:49):
Two blocks from where I live, you have Prospect Pack
and I have six hundred acres at my feet, and
then there's a library that is spent time in, and
then beyond that is the Botanic Gardens, and then I'm
a member. So when the Rosa and bloom, I go
right there, and I'm there every second week. I'm there
(51:11):
to see what's happening there. We were raised like that.
I don't know about men in India, but the girls
are raised not to ever get bored, so they teach
us all hobbies. Whether we follow them or not is
up to us. So look at me now. You always
ask me, aren't you alone? I'm not alone either. I
listen to your podcasts of music and go sit out
(51:35):
read work in the garden walk.
Speaker 12 (51:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 20 (51:38):
And then the two kids upstairs who like to be
out in the yard there, and I love their company,
take them up for ice creams now and then it's
good to spoil them. And then Henry comes to see
me often, and now when then Ruby comes, but Ruby
wants to be alone, and they come and play board
games with me, or we watch a show together. And
(52:00):
I love that when you go out at night and
we just have a movie night with them. Love that
by just getting rder because they're getting older.
Speaker 18 (52:11):
What about exercise.
Speaker 20 (52:13):
I don't go to a gym or anything here, and
yet in the evening when I check, it's twelve thousand
to seventeen thousand steps, and I don't realize that, nor
do I feel it, because I haven't done it for exercise.
I've just gone to the park and stopped to pet
all the dogs and so that all the dogs know me.
The other day there was a dog called sb Alsation
(52:36):
that I hadn't seen.
Speaker 12 (52:37):
But it's fun. I get no people because of the dogs.
Speaker 18 (52:40):
Maybe, Yeah, what do you want from me and Shampa?
Speaker 20 (52:46):
Just for both of you to have a happy life,
balance in life, balance with work and play, and work
in family, which I don't see. Somehow both of you
just get pulled into work.
Speaker 12 (53:01):
And it's not just the two of you.
Speaker 20 (53:03):
I see everybody because I don't know sometimes if the
computers are being or a boone. But I just want
to see you happy, happy in life.
Speaker 3 (53:20):
I've spent so many months asking how to live longer,
but what my mother is asking me gently is whether
I know how to live better?
Speaker 5 (53:37):
Anything else you want to say.
Speaker 20 (53:40):
Now, I just remember that life is a gift, and
never be morose about anything. Everything's fleeting. It's stratitude and
perception that keeps you going. Yeah, there's so much to
do in the world and on the.
Speaker 12 (54:19):
River the sentisoned a friends.
Speaker 8 (54:23):
All head out there.
Speaker 3 (54:26):
If you could do it all again, look that so fast?
But change is things. You could do.
Speaker 7 (54:37):
It all again, sire, Come down.
Speaker 8 (54:42):
Come downtown, Come now. I can't be.
Speaker 7 (55:11):
Life is it was like Nevers.
Speaker 3 (55:15):
I don't believe it's like nevils.
Speaker 12 (55:19):
I don't believe it now it's like Nevers.
Speaker 7 (55:23):
I don't believe it now, It's like.
Speaker 3 (55:27):
Never next time. On the final episode of How to
Live Forever.
Speaker 21 (55:43):
My body is fragile and vulnerable and that is one
of the capital t truths that folks either deny or
make them too uncomfortable to think about, and so they
try to fix with all types of hacks that just
really do anything about it.
Speaker 3 (56:17):
Credits This episode of Skylan Drive How to Live Forever
was a total family and friend's affair. The show had
written and hosted by Me Manga s particular, if you
have the same last name as me, reach out because
we are definitely related. Massive thanks to Mark Lotto, who
edited this and also spends so much time watching Doordarshan
one and two. Why Mark? Why Lizzy Jacobs, our showrunner,
(56:41):
without whom I might still be staring at a computer
debating whether or not to buy.
Speaker 5 (56:46):
My ticket to India.
Speaker 3 (56:47):
Thank you, Lizzy for giving me that shove. The one
and only Mary full of Sandy, who researched and fact
checked the heck out of the show. Where will we
be without you? Mary probably still wondering more about claviculars
You's history. Mark Steven Allen, our brilliant signs producer who
told me I had to meet Rag of you were
absolutely right. Raga was a delight. Thank you. If you
(57:09):
like the way this show sounds, it is beautiful because
of these people. Joe Plored who mixed and sound designed
the show. You both read my mind and made things
sound so gorgeous. Of Lissamsa Azzati and of course Botany,
you all lent me incredible music. Thank you so much.
I've got to give a special extra shout out to
(57:30):
Peter Matthew Bauer, my friend. The song Miracles comes from
his gorgeous, gorgeous album Flowers, which I have listened to
on repeat and you should too. This show is executive
produced from Iharp and my good friends Ali Perry, Katrina
Norvel from Kalaidyscope. We've got my co founder Ozwa listen.
Julian mutter Our head of studio, Rachel strom Our brilliant
(57:52):
lawyer and friend who is always the person you want
your corner, whether you want legal advice or secondhand pizza shirts.
Also thank you. Thank you so much to the team here,
Christy David, Dara Agna, Sheina Calypso l Viney for the
beautiful collage art. There are so many of you. I
also have to give a shout out to the kiddos
you know I do, Ruby, Julian Grendel, lu Baby Leon,
(58:15):
Baby hal Enzo and pearl Etour and of course Henry
for being so sweet about my face and reminding me
that if I just changed the direction of my hair,
I could look a little more like Ozel. I need
to thank my friends. iHeart Bob Connell, will carry Nikki, Jason,
Jerry and Moore, Also Shanta and Sara Shitra Pacci who's
sweet enough to accompany us to goa which made my trip,
(58:39):
All my family in India, all my family in the States.
Speaker 2 (58:41):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (58:42):
Before I go, I have to send special thanks to
the brilliant professor a scholar, also Lizzie's cousin who trained
at the Anti Luella School for Elocution, the inimitable rush Me, Rye,
rush Me, you are the best. Thank you so much
for doing this. Also the very biggest thanks to Lucas Adams,
founder an editor of the New York Review of Comics,
with whom I will be eating those caramelized sweet potatoes
(59:05):
very soon, I promise. And just one last thank you
to my Amma, my dad, Lali Thanomische tikother who keep
looking out for me even when I'm trying to look
out for them. Thank you so much for listening.
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