October 1, 2025 • 60 mins
What happens when a world-famous photographer nearly loses everything — and turns it into a movement redefining aging?
In this powerful conversation, David Stewart shares his journey from shooting Vogue covers and working with Andy Warhol’s circle, to battling a life-threatening autoimmune disease that forced him to rethink everything. Out of crisis came transformation — and the creation of Ageist and Super Age, two platforms challenging stereotypes about aging and proving that purpose, health, and vitality don’t fade with time.
Watch now to discover how to stay healthier, live longer, and embrace your true greatness.
Timestamps:
00:00 Catching up: Manhattan, travel, and life during Covid
01:36 Childhood, school struggles, and proving people wrong
04:07 Studying engineering, switching to political science, and discovering photography
06:14 Declaring himself a photographer, early Vogue ad, and move to Paris
07:01 Life in New York: Andy Warhol’s scene, magazine covers, and big clients
08:02 Health crisis, autoimmune disease, and a year in hospital
10:00 Turning point: removing his spleen and changing lifestyle
11:01 The birth of Ageist: challenging age stereotypes in media and advertising
14:50 White-light moment with AT&T campaign and marketing blind spots
18:50 Age dysmorphia, beauty industry challenges, and why older audiences are complex
21:27 From Ageist to Super Age: growth, readership, and global impact
25:27 Health transformation and connecting mindset with the body
30:00 Teaching moments: embodied wisdom, confidence, and breaking limits
33:55 What Super Age does: informing, inspiring, and offering trusted tools
35:10 Longevity pillars: sleep, fitness, stress management, and community
37:31 Why grip strength and VO₂ max matter for longevity
41:42 Smart habits vs. fads: avoiding “dumb stuff” and focusing on basics
44:39 Managing stress, hormetic adaptation, and resilience
45:00 Why men chase longevity more than women
46:04 Thoughts on Brian Johnson and longevity biohacking
47:50 The future of health: AI-driven personalized medicine
51:28 Wearables: when they help vs. when they hurt
53:12 Passing wisdom to the next generation: embracing greatness and usefulness
56:15 Final reflections: passion, usefulness, and living as a contender
Learn more about MEA at https://www.meawisdom.com/
#Longevity #HealthyAging #RedefiningAging #SuperAge #Ageist #MidlifeReinvention #MindsetMatters #AgingWell #LifeAfterCrisis #HealthTransformation #Vitality #BreakingAgingStereotypes #AgingStrong #LongevityLifestyle #AgelessLiving
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
The thing that you fear most is your own greatness and owning
that greatness, and this is yourgreatest challenge.
The vast, vast majority of people, according to Mr. James
and I believe this, live far below the limits of their
capacity. You can do incredible things.
You can have an enormous impact on the people around you.
You can do things that are far, far beyond your imagination, but
(00:24):
you need to get going. Welcome to the Midlife Chrysalis
Podcast with Chip Conley, where we explore how midlife isn't a
crisis, but a chrysalis, a time of profound transformation that
can lead to the most meaningful chapter of your life.
Chip Conley, I'm here. I just got off this episode with
(00:47):
David Stewart, who is maybe one of the best known photographers
in the world, who in midlife realized that he wanted to study
ageism. And he, you know, he was famous
in the advertising industry. And then he said like this
industry's ageist. So he created something called
Ageist and then he created something called Super Age.
And he's one of the biggest thought leaders in the world on
(01:08):
the topic of how do we live our lives in our 50s and beyond,
especially focused on the physical side of things.
So while many of my podcast episodes focus on the emotional
and the spiritual side, this onewas very focused on the
physical, especially on longevity.
And so for those of you out there who are a little curious
about some hacks that are going to help you with your longevity
(01:30):
and living a longer, healthier, happier life, I think you'll
enjoy this episode. Well, hello, David.
Hey, Jeff, good to see you. Where are you?
Where are we catching you? In LA or in In Miami or in.
You. Hi me.
That's the East River, so I'm inManhattan.
You're in Manhattan, OK. Is that so?
That's actually. That's not a virtual background.
(01:51):
That is, that is. That boat there is moving, yeah.
Oh wow, it is. You were.
You were in New York a long time, weren't you originally?
Yeah, I, I mean, I came here as a basically a kid in 78 and then
I moved back here. Then I went to school for a
while and then I came here, I think in 84, and I was here for
(02:13):
a long time, I guess about 30 years or so, like kind of off
and on. I did some time in Miami, some
time in Paris, but basically here.
And then I did a stint in LA andnow I'm back here.
When you had a. Little Park City time there too,
didn't you there? Was there was that sort of COVID
like weird? Like I got marooned in this ski
resort, which I thought was likea couple of weeks, and I was
(02:34):
there for four years. Well, and that was during during
that time to, to give some background on our relationship,
you and I did a happy hour. So we were all stuck at home.
And I think it was your suggestion like, like let's do
you, you had an online magazine online community called Aegis.
And I, we had Mea. And frankly, Mea was not, we
(02:55):
didn't have any people coming toour our campuses.
And so we had Norma Kamali and and Danny Meyer, the
restauranteur and just, you know, we had some fun with that.
But yeah, tell, tell us, give. I'd love to have you give us the
origin story of David because I really actually don't know.
I know for 40 years or so you have been a moderately famous
(03:19):
commercial, moderately very famous commercial photographer.
The kind of your client list is like the Fortune 500 companies
in the world. But I don't know the the origin
story of who you grew up as and how did you end up in that path?
Yes. So we're going to go back there
and I know you, this is just, everybody knows David doesn't
(03:40):
love like that. Like, oh, like Chip being the
psychologist here, I promise youI will not do too much
psychology. OK, so I grew up in upstate New
York. My parents divorced.
I was about 12. I was about 12, I want to say.
So it's like 1970, which is kindof a weird, like that just
didn't happen then. And then my mom and my brother
(04:03):
myself moved to a little town South of Rochester, NY called
Geneseo, which is like, I don't know, 4 or 5000 people.
And there's a State College and my mom was a school teacher.
And so I was like a latchkey kidas sort of everyone was in those
times, but maybe maybe more thanothers.
(04:24):
And I was sort of a shy kid and I was small for my age.
And I, I quickly found out that some of my ideas and thinking
were not very well received withmy classmates and some of the,
the teachers. So I learned to just sort of
keep my mouth shut, keep my headdown.
(04:44):
But I always did, I always did really well on these
standardized tests. But I remember my, so if you
want me to, if you want to really get my attention, tell me
I can't do something. So My, my high school guidance
counselor took me aside and said, well, we're not sure that
you're really cut out for a fouryear school.
You should probably go to like atwo year state school or
(05:06):
something. And, and I was like, you don't
understand. So I, I decided to, I, I like,
you know, this is the guidance stuff.
Like, what do you do? How much money does different
things make? And so were those two things
maximum money of like sort of, you know, which in my aptitudes
(05:28):
was engineering. So it was like, OK, I'm an
engineer. So I went to, I studied
mechanical engineering at Rochester Institute of
Technology, which to this day isstill that back then that was
like joining the Marines. It was like, it was not PC.
You got yelled at up at the board.
It was intense. But I did, I, you know, I could
(05:52):
do it. I, it was OK, but I felt like it
was really limiting to me. I, I, I was getting a technical
education. I knew that I wanted to sort of
broaden my mind. I wanted to, I was reading a lot
of other things and we get pictures and stuff.
So after I did 2 years of that and I had a Co-op job in the
summer and after that I was like, oh I really don't want to
do this. I was just like sitting at a
(06:12):
desk and like no, that's not my,that's not my thing.
So I left and I studied political science at Boston
University. I tried to go to fancier
schools, but they told me I wasn't smart enough.
So I didn't get into Columbia. I couldn't get into any of these
little like fancier school. So I went to BU and I studied
political science because it hadthe word science in it.
So I thought, OK, I can that sort of parallel somehow, but it
(06:36):
was so much easier than going toengineering school.
I so I went to BU full time at night.
I studied photography at this little technical school in
Kenmore Square called New England School Photography.
And I got myself a part time joband I was still out all night
doing stuff because it was just compared to what I had done.
(06:56):
This was just like nothing. So I started with photography.
I I think I got my first camera when I was like 6 or 7.
I always really like them. And then because as only a 22
year old can, upon leaving school, I declared myself a
photographer and therefore I was, I started like right away
(07:19):
working because back then you had to have a real grasp of like
some kind of you. I need to go with technology
there. Wasn't there was definitely a
science piece to this? Oh 100%.
There was like a craft to it. Like it was.
You had to understand the chemistry and like there was
like there was no autofocus. It was like there was a skill,
(07:40):
there was a, there's a Moat of askill around it.
And, and I was able to understand that easily.
You know, 24, I think I had my first ad in Vogue.
And then I moved to Paris. I think I was like 25 or so.
And then I worked for the magazines there for a while and
then I came back and then I moved to New York.
And then when you moved to, at least in that time when you
(08:02):
moved to New York, nobody cared about anything you've done
anywhere else. If you hadn't done in New York,
you were zero. So I started working when Andy
Warhol had interview. Maybe it's like a whole that was
like, that was a scene. That could be a separate podcast
that's. Just like a the whole Andy
(08:25):
scene. And then I started working for,
you know, the kind of mass magazines and Hearst magazines.
Originally new fashion, but thenI moved into portrait stuff and
then I started making the money was in advertising.
So I started doing that and thensort of smaller stuff, but then
(08:46):
like bigger American Express, Nike, sort of big stuff.
And lot of did a lot of, I don'tknow, maybe like a dozen covers
in the New York Times Magazine back when that was a thing and
too much of that stuff. And so I, I got really sick.
I was living in Paris at that point.
I think it was about 4000 and 50, and I was working sort of
(09:08):
Paris, NY, LA Paris. That sounds very glamorous, but
what it really means is you're aperma jet lag.
You're just like, what day is it?
What currency? What's the language?
So I got this weird autoimmune disease, probably because of the
lifestyle I was living, and I spent the better part of a year
in a hospital. How?
Old were you? You were between 40 and 50.
You were in your 40s. 4849 something like that.
(09:30):
It's a low point on the euchre of happiness, OK?
Well, yeah, this wasn't, I wasn't even thinking of
happiness. I was thinking like like.
Survival. Like survival, like not not
bleed to death tonight so that Ican see tomorrow.
And they were I was just a science experiment.
Like they're he's like medicinesreally greatly break your arm.
(09:51):
It's great. You got some like weirdo auto.
I mean, my autoimmune thing was like it was like a pediatric
thing. So most of the people on my
board were like those little kids or sometimes women get it
after childbirth. And but, and then there's like
me. So eventually what happened was
they were giving, I was getting these things called IDIGS, which
(10:14):
are human. They're very expensive human
blood treatment that I would get.
But there's a lot of risk to that if you're getting these all
the time. So, and they weren't working as
well. And they always told me like the
this 60% chance of curing this thing as we take your spleen
out. And I was like organ removal
that sounds. Can we talk about that a little
(10:36):
more? That seems a little rash.
But then it was just like, OK, Igive up after a year of this.
And I was just, you know, like walking across the room was a
challenge. I, it was.
So anyway, I have my spleen out and then everything got better,
but I realized like life needs to change.
(10:58):
Like so I left New York, I movedto Los Angeles and that was
better. And I started paying more
attention to my health, not in anot a really directed way, but
just like what, what can I do here to work out better?
And then when I was 56, I started the investigation that
(11:23):
became ageist. So I'm 66 now.
So that was about no, that soundwas 54.
It's 12 years ago. Oh my God.
So I started this investigation of why was all the messaging
aimed at people like me this week, like really weirdly
medicalized infantilizing the couple with the dockers on the
beach with the dog. They walk the bike because it's
(11:44):
too dangerous for them to ride the bike.
So they push the bike like it's just like, what is this?
Let me just say, let me do a quick interruption because so
your health journey was like what we would call the midlife
chrysalis. It was, you might call it a
crisis, but it really what a chrysalis is a time of
(12:05):
transformation. And on the other side of that,
something is better. And that is our one of our
basic, you know, pieces of ethosat, at MEA.
And you know that you're an MEA faculty member.
So you had this midlife chrysalis.
It sort of woke you up to your health.
This was. Not a white light experience.
This was very gradual. OK, let's.
(12:26):
Let's acknowledge it was gradualand at the same time, as someone
who has spent his whole career in the packaging, you know,
making people look good and making and the advertising
business and Madison Ave. And you know, if, if in many
ways, our, our aegis culture hasa lot to do with Madison Ave.
(12:48):
and Hollywood. And so all of a sudden you got
this click in your head, this this sort of epiphany, what we
would call at at MEA and Baja, the Baja Aha.
You got this sense that you wanted to explore this a little
bit further. Why is it that we live in an
(13:08):
Aegis culture? Keep going.
So there was. Something that happened that
caused this. So I don't know if I'm getting
in trouble if I tell you the story, but OK, I'm going to tell
you the story. So what happened was I got hired
by Vice Media when Vice was, I don't know, Vice still exists,
but it was sort of like a thing then.
(13:28):
And so I got hired to do this job for AT&T and they brought me
on. I was, I was 54 at the time.
I was more than twice as old as the art director.
I was like, I don't know, 30 years old and the creative
director, but I was like, definitely the oldest person in
the room. And but they brought me in
(13:50):
because they knew like I could sort of like deliver, like I
could like do this thing and nobody.
It was interesting there, you know, it was very like super hip
cool, but they were fine with me.
I never got, I never got any sort of like, you know, just
like they just treated me like somebody else.
(14:10):
So anyway, we did this thing, soit was for AT&T, it was an out
of home thing, which means billboards.
And we did, I think we did 60 ofthem.
It was a huge, huge job. It was like a 7 figure like all
around the country. So major thing.
And so at the end of it, I was at this point I'm just a
photographer. So but I'm taught, you know, you
(14:31):
talk to the people, you talk to the talent.
So I say at the end, I said, do you know that 59 of the people
we photographed are on their parents contract?
They are not the customer. Like why are we?
I understand they're part of thedecision making cascade on what
sort of cell phone they want, but they're not the ones who buy
(14:54):
this. Why?
I don't understand. And so they said to me, well, we
market to younger people becausethat's what we know how to do.
And I said, but did you tell AT&T this?
And they're like, Oh no, Oh no, we wouldn't tell them that.
I said I was just like, what up?This is the craziest thing I've
ever heard. So that was a white light
(15:15):
moment. That was like, there is a
massive disconnect here. I need to understand this.
So I did. So what I did, Chip, is I was
like, I this is the craziest thing I've ever heard.
And so I spent a month in this deep dive exploration of why
this was, and I came to an understanding of why this
(15:36):
marketing was done this way and why people do this and why all
this money is spent for this consumer base that does not buy
the product, which seemed lunacyto me.
And so I go back to them and I say, guys, like, let me show you
some numbers here. The people you're marketing to,
this is how much money they got.It's like nothing.
These other people over here, they have all this money and
actually they buy the stuff. Nobody's over here, it's all
(16:00):
white space. We can own this.
This would be fantastic. And the guy he, he was an
English guy, used to work for the FT really smart guy.
And he looks at me and he says, that's terrific.
But you're asking me to time travel into the future.
I can't do that. We we're we can't do that.
I thought I can do that and that's.
(16:20):
Where ages came about, that's where it.
Started that was like, and therewas a lot more investigation and
then thousands of hours of videointerviews trying to understand,
to essentially de brainwash myself to understand why this
was happening, why these people were portrayed in a certain way.
And it basically just comes downto laziness, that it's just much
(16:44):
harder to talk to people our agethan it is to a 20 year old
because a 20 year old is that though I don't.
Understand that why is it harder?
Why is it harder to talk to us? Oh, it's.
Way harder because a 20 year oldis a monoculture, a global
monoculture. They're all the same.
Now, if you tell them that they're going to get pissed off,
but they they know all the same cultural cues, they listen to
(17:07):
the same music, they're pretty much in the same thing.
What happens is the is the demo gets older.
It splits like radically on all fronts.
So like you and I at our age compared to like my wife's
relatives in North Georgia is a different planet.
You cannot talk to these people the same.
(17:29):
So the fail that happens is in that form of communication to
people our age is they look at this and I, I can't tell you how
many of these like Stanford finance Bros I've been around
the table with who tried this. And they're like, oh, look at
all this white space. Oh, we want it all.
We want it all right now. But no, dude, you can't do that.
You got to pick a tight lane because it's so different.
(17:53):
And the, the fail was, this was the, the huge finding that we
did was that we could not understand why these really
smart people were failing so badly.
They were, you know, they're using quant peeps.
The quant is like, where does somebody live?
What's their education, what's their income level, health
(18:14):
status, things like that to, to sort of put people into
categories or archetypes. And what we realized was that's
all nice, but what you, you wantto know one thing and one thing
only. How does that person perceive
their physicality in the future?If you know that you got the
whole ball of wax, the rest of it doesn't matter.
(18:36):
But that that was the thing. And once we understood that,
that sort of unlocked like the whole Aegis journey.
Explain. What Aegis is and then also
explain in the last dozen years,are you happy with the
transition or the evolution of the advertising industry And
(18:58):
let's let's recognize advertising is a whole different
beast today than at what used tobe in the era of social media
etcetera. But do you think that like
Madison Ave. and Hollywood is getting it?
That's such an. Interesting question, Pregnant.
Pause, pregnant pause, basically.
Madison Ave. and Hollywood are quickly becoming irrelevant.
(19:19):
Madison Ave. is irrelevant. Hollywood is a couple of years
away from being totally irrelevant, so it gets tricky.
One of the reasons it's much harder to talk to people our age
is because we suffer from age dysmorphia, explain.
Explain SO. I look in the mirror, I'm 66.
I see someone who's 46 for thosewho are.
(19:41):
Not seeing David right now. This guy looks like he's 46.
I, I just want to say he's leaner and smelter than any 66
year old. I know we'll come back to that.
We're going to talk about the health journey, but let me just
say in your case it works. In my case, not so much.
At 64, so. This is one of the, the, the,
the difficulties is when someone's 20, they pretty much
(20:04):
feel like they're 20 because they don't have the history
behind them. As people get older, there's
this funny thing that happens where the sense of our age is
really volatile and it depends on did I sleep well last night?
What do I look? It's not, it's just not a fixed
thing. But in general, the, you know,
(20:27):
the studies that we've done, it's there's about a 20 year
delta between how old you are and how old you think you are.
So if you think, you know, in myOK, so I think I'm 46.
Do I want to see pictures of people who are typically 66,
which is my age, or do I identify with people who are 20
(20:48):
years younger than me? So this is the tremendous
challenge of and in advertising,you see it, it's most acute in
the beauty industry. It's it's the and I and I,
whatever we think of what they're doing, I can tell you
they try really, really hard andthey have the hardest job on the
(21:12):
planet. It's just an impossible, they
are an impossible place. So that's that's one of the
things. And so now we're you know, Aegis
is now 10 years into this. We're we're you know, we started
out sending a newsletter to fifty of our friends.
Our grand vision was they would remain our friends.
And now we have this, you know, much bigger thing, this
(21:34):
international thing. And then that led to what I'm
doing now, which is Super Age, which we launched in November.
And this is much bigger fish, much bigger pond.
So explain. I have over 1.2 million readers.
After seven months, I have an open rate of 50% at that scale.
(21:58):
Like nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody has that.
And it's really about if you letpeople, if you see people and
you serve people and you do it in a trustworthy way, it
resonates. What's the?
Difference between the two I I Iknow this the answer but I want
(22:19):
to have you explain the difference between ages because
they both still exist. Ages and super age very.
Valid question, I get this askedall the time.
So super age wouldn't exist without ages.
There was 10 years of learning that went in to super age.
Ages by its very name is againstsomething.
It was it's a real F you. It was just like because when we
(22:42):
when we started this chip, like the names out there were just
like, oh, silver golden Lib, like what, like come on.
So we just decided to just go like full punk rock.
And it's like, no, we're ages. And so people will ask me like,
Oh, that's a negative. And I say really, a biologist is
really their study biology. I didn't know really.
(23:03):
So super age is not pushing against anything.
It's, it's up and down the age column because in the last 10
years, the things that we found were very important to people
who were over 50. And, and mind you, we only show
people over 50 in ages. 40% of that audience is under 50 and
(23:26):
like 20% of it is under 30. So we realized there was this
resonance up and down the age column because the things we
were talking about were important to everyone.
Like, do you want to live healthier, happier and longer?
OK, that's somewhat universal and that's what super age is
about. So it's.
Sort of age fluid. I mean, it's, it's a cross.
(23:47):
It's, it's, it's, you know, it's, it doesn't really depend
upon your chronological age because let's be honest, we have
more than a chronological age that we have a, we, we have a,
you know, a cognitive age. We have a heart age.
We have a, we have all kinds of,we have a mindset age.
So, you know, I, I think in the future we're going to, you know,
(24:08):
you go in for a job interview and well, they, they would, no
one would ask what age you are. But the truth is, you could be
so many ages today because it's not.
It just, it isn't just, you know, the chronological age of
what's under on your driver's license.
Somewhat meaningless statistic like that, like it's a data
point, OK, but it's not. It's like what is your mindset?
(24:32):
What is what is your view of yourself?
What is your view of the world? How are I mean, I know 25 year
olds that have self fossilized. OK right.
And I know 80 year olds that arelike wild, vividly creative and
curious and like out there doingstuff and you.
Profile them very well in ages. So I, I, I just want everybody
(24:54):
to know that that's it's a greatplace to see personalities and
people who just are age fluid intheir life.
They do not, they're not defining themselves based upon
their generation or their age. They're all the ages they've
ever been or will ever be. So, yeah, I, I think that we
live in an era where the road map of the past are that our
(25:17):
parents had or that the world sort of put out for us doesn't
make sense anymore. I mean, it's really people are
on such different paths from age50 and beyond.
So I want to hear your story about your health though,
because you know, you say it wasa long, slow process from your
(25:37):
late 40s until maybe 56 or so when you when you really started
leaning in to being the, the lean, he leaned into being lean
and leaned into longevity and you leaned into really studying
your, your level of knowledge. I mean, there's lots of famous
(25:58):
people out there around longevity.
Mark Hyman taught at MEA and there's, you know, Peter Attias,
probably maybe the the most famous one right now, but you're
you're in that class. And so talk a little bit about
your own personal journey aroundhealth because you're much in
much better shape today than youwere 30 years ago and at 66 and
(26:21):
also what you've learned about the body and the body mind
connection and you know what youknow, what are some tips?
Well, I'll. I'll tell you the technical
knowledge that I've gained, which is really kind of, I'm
going to think of it, it's amazing.
Like, and it's all pretty much from the podcasting that I've
(26:42):
done. So I've interviewed on my
podcast like like 200 the world's leading authorities on
and, and so I, you know, the nice thing about having a mind
is you can learn at any age. And so I have learned and so
it's become important to me to really understand these things.
And as you said, you know, we'renot living the same way.
(27:04):
And it's Mike Raisins, one of our friends.
He's the head of Wellness at theCleveland Clinic.
So he he was like 20 years ago. He said 60 is the new 40.
And it's now he's saying 90 is the new 40.
And So what we're seeing here isthat we are not everyone, but
there is a substantial and growing cohort of people that
(27:26):
are our age who we can read. I mean, it's not delusional to
think that you're going to live another 30-40, 50 years.
I mean, and so that for me was just sort of a slow.
It's like I'd sort of learn morethings.
It's like, oh, if I do this, this happens.
Oh, this is a better way to do that.
(27:48):
Oh yeah, don't do this other thing.
And it, it was just sort of, it became one of the things that I
learned from like I've had, I'vebeen injured.
I actually, I had, I had partialknee replacement six weeks ago
and when I was teaching at the MEAI was on crutches and I just
saw the pictures. It's sort of a little
(28:10):
antithetical. I'm talking about mobility and
health and Wellness on crutches.But Oh well.
What I realized was the, the interaction between the body and
the mind and how much these things intersect because you're
(28:30):
the, you know, our, our main publication at super age is
called the mindset. And the reason for that is if
you're, you need to have the mindset that says that this is
possible. And, and if you're a pessimist
and you think it's not possible,you know what I tell people is
(28:51):
if you're a pessimist, it doesn't matter how much
knowledge, the resources I give you, not you're not going to do
anything. You're just not going to do
anything. But if you are an optimist, you
will seek all these things out and you'll start finding what
works for you and you'll be finding a path forward.
And one of the things that we did when I was in MEA was I
(29:13):
thought it was really important to connect the, the amazing MEA
curriculum that you've developedover all these years, which is
just like much. I was like, this is really good.
They are really good at this. I'm turning red that to connect
(29:35):
that to this idea in one sphere,letting people know that they
can do more than they think theycan and then connect that to the
body. So there was, there was 1
gentleman, I'm not going to tellyou his name, but he was there.
And part of the thing was like, we, we had a little step and I
said, there's a box and I see he's got 2 feet.
(29:56):
And I said, I want you to jump up on the box, 2 feet, just jump
up. So he's like, and there's a bit
of a hesitation and he's about 70.
He's he's sporty guy. So he jumps on the two boxes.
I said, OK, great. 1 foot right leg jump on the box.
He's like, and he freezes. He's like, I can't do that.
I said, yeah, you can. He's like, no, I can't.
(30:16):
I said, come on over here. So I said one leg, I want you to
jump 2 feet forward. OK, he can do that.
OK, now do it again. Do it again.
Do it again. OK, Come back over the box.
One leg on the box. I'll catch you if you don't make
it. So it's not a big, it's about an
8 inch box. And he makes it right.
And so you you see in a flash his life just changed because he
(30:41):
saw he could do something that he didn't think was possible.
And suddenly once you do that, you question all, it just opens
up, right? What are the other sort of
stories that I'm telling myself that I can't do, that I can do?
I think there's something reallypowerful about connecting that
to the body and saying you're stronger, you're braver and more
(31:04):
capable than you think you are here in the same way in the
classroom. And some of the other lessons
that we're learning here about what we can do out in the world
emotionally or intellectually, business wise relationships.
But if you can, if you can bringthis other piece in, oh that,
then it's like there's somethingabout like there's something
(31:26):
about that that little thing, Chip.
It's one thing if you sort of tell somebody theoretically in a
classroom or you can do these things, but you take them
outside and you say jump on the box.
It's a little thing there. It's like, oh, this all makes
sense. That's.
Embodied wisdom. I mean, wisdom is this thing you
learn based upon life experience, but when it's
physical, it's even more tangible.
(31:48):
It's like it's, you know, it's, it's woven into your DNA almost.
It's immediate. It's like right there, I'm on
the box. I never thought I would be on
the box so. Mindsets are so important.
And you know, for those who don't know it, Becca Levy at
Yale has done, you know, research on this for 20 years
and, and shown that frankly, when you can shift your mindset
in midlife about aging from a negative, going from anti aging
(32:12):
to pro aging. And I don't want to say pro
aging. I don't mean we just want to get
old faster. I just mean that we see some of
the unexpected pleasures of getting older and we see some of
the upside of what we can do to make ourselves feel better.
If you can do that, go from negative to positive, you gain 7
1/2 years of additional longevity, which is frankly
maybe longer than any of the current longevity hacks out
(32:33):
there. Yes, I think the longevity hacks
will catch up, especially as we get more, you know, more testing
and more data on it. But this mindset piece is so
essential. So I think it's great that the
magazine for Super age is calledMindset, but you also have
clients. So you super age is really a
platform for you to go out to industry and you know, and and
(32:58):
be, you know, you're sort of a pro AI don't want to call pro.
What would you call yourself? I call myself a midlife
activist. If you had to say you're an
activist, what would you say? You're a super age activist.
That's what you are. No, I sort.
Of feel like I'm a spectacle. You are a spectacle.
You're very entertaining. What would you call yourself?
Well. I I think first of all Super Age
at for all intents and purposes of media company and our job is
(33:23):
to inform, inspire people who read Super Age and and provide
them with tools to add to the menu of what entrusted tools to
what they can do. I will say that there are
probably you're not reading the mindset if you're a pessimist
(33:46):
and you're not going to, you're not going to be doing any of
that sort of longevity stuff if you're a pessimist because why
would you? Yeah.
You're going to die tomorrow. You know what?
Yes, exactly. Why you die tomorrow?
Why would I do this? We're all going to die.
Tomorrow, you know, I mean. So tell.
Me a little bit about so you studying this and and what in
terms of what's worked best for you if you were to distill it
(34:09):
down to maybe 3 tips whether it's you know sleep nutrition
food you know exercise what would be some of your key tips
that have worked for you so I look.
At this, I mean, sometimes people ask me to sort of stack
rank these things and I, I mean I, you could sort of I mean if
(34:31):
you you got to go to sleep, I think I sort of look at these
more as a Venn diagram and they all sort of intersect and when
they're all functioning togetherat that center point is how you
super age. And so the elements of the the
Venn would probably be sleep, nutrition, movement, exercise,
(34:56):
stress management and community purpose connection.
So it's sort of. Like the lifestyle medicine
area, you know, it's, it's, you're familiar with lifestyle
medicine. So for those who are not
familiar to just check out, you know, AI on lifestyle medicine
and you'll see that there's usually about 7 different
(35:17):
pillars of lifestyle medicine, many of which Dave just talked
about. But do you have a stack ranking?
Do you think sleeping sleeps themost important of them all?
I don't care how much. Vitamin C you're taking, if
you're not going to sleep, nothing works.
You're going to sleep, you sabotage the whole thing.
But if you they like these things interact you also, you
(35:39):
know, the number one longevity drug, bar none is fitness like
nothing, nothing comes close. I don't care how much rapamycin
you're taking, how much NAD whatever.
No, it's it's fitness. It's what's your VO.
You know, what's your cardiovascular fitness is
(36:00):
measured by VO2 Max. You know, what's your how much
muscle you got on yourself, What's your grip strength, stuff
like that. And why is?
Grip strength. Let's talk about grip strength
because that's become very hot topic.
So grip strength is I think seenas maybe the most important
proxy or the maybe the best proxy for understanding whether
(36:20):
how you're doing with your strength and, and, and, and why
is that? Well.
It is a proxy. So I mean, if you bought a
tennis ball, you squeezed it 10,000 times a day, this will
not increase your life expectancy.
But if you're doing pull ups andyou're doing you're lifting
weight, you're doing all this, all this stuff requires you
gripping thing. So that I think is where it
(36:41):
comes from. I don't, I might be wrong in
this, but I don't personally believe that having a a powerful
grip in and of itself. I mean, it is useful if you're
going to fall, you grab a rail or you can, you know, but it I,
I think it's like it's somethingthat gets dragged along with all
this other activity in in the same way.
The reason your cardiovascular fitness and especially things
(37:04):
like VO2 Max, which is your the sort of your maximum ability to
explain what. That is and and and.
Do you recommend that people asktheir doctor about doing a VO2
Max test? Yeah.
Yeah, you should. You should.
You know, I tell people feelingsare not facts like you, You
know, if you people don't die ofno one predicts they have a
(37:27):
feeling they're going to have a heart attack or they have a
feeling if something's wrong with them.
No, you need data and you need to back this up.
So a VO2 Max test is they put a mask on you and they put you on
a bike or something similar and they put a chest strap on you
and they read, they see how muchwhat you're essentially your
(37:47):
cardiovascular fitness is. And that is a very good
predictor of mortality. And the lovely thing about VO2
Max is you can make enormous improvements in the, in the fall
last year I was, my Apple Watch said that my VO2 Max I think was
like 34. And I thought, oh, that's not
very good. I got to do something about
this. So I decided to put myself on a
(38:10):
VO2 Max training program becauseas you will know, the, the main
motivator in David's life is to become the best version of David
he can. So I'm an endless self
improvement. So I thought, OK, I'm going to
do this. And then I was at a place in Los
Angeles and they test me for VO2Max.
I think it, I want to say it was48.
So 48 is an elite level for somebody who's like 30.
(38:31):
Now, I mind you, as anyone who'smet me, I'm not a super athlete.
It's just, I'm saying this because you can make like if you
decide to do this and it's not that hard, you can, you can make
enormous changes in your Physiology.
It's, it's one of those things, Chip, I tell people it's not too
(38:54):
late. I don't care how old you are,
it's not too late. I'm not saying this is easy.
You need to take actions. You can't just watch television
and expect for like this is something's going to happen to
you got to you. You have to do it.
But it's not like these impossible Herculean feats.
You can it's it's you know, anyway, so VO2 Max is a good
(39:15):
one. Yes, your doctor probably won't
test you for it. They probably don't have the
capacity, but they will probablybe some like, you know, little
place in your town that tests you for VO2 Max.
It's like 75 bucks. Get it, get it tested and then
you'll know where you stand. And you know what a Tia says is
you want to be at the elite level for the 10 year span
(39:36):
underneath you, which when I sawthat, wow, that's really hard.
But no, you, I mean, I did it. It's not you.
You can do it. Explain that.
So for the meaning, meaning if you're 65, you want to be for at
55, you want to be at the elite level.
At 55 you want to be the elite level at. 55 right, because it
it does fall off like everythingwith age but you can arrest this
(40:00):
and you can you can you can falloff from a higher level, which
is sort of a Tia's whole thing right?
Like it's the things going to fall off, but you get to choose
from what level they fall off from so.
What's a longevity hack that's gotten a lot of attention, but
you sort of laugh at it either. Like, I don't, I really don't
think that works so well. Oh God.
(40:21):
How much time do we have? There's just a lot of I feel
like every day I, I, somebody will send me something from
TikTok or some insanity rather than talk about what doesn't
work. It's like the stuff don't eat
(40:41):
stupid stuff, right? Like just, you know, there's all
this sort of like, oh, that you need to be a vegan, you need to
be a Carver, you need to be visited.
It's just like, OK, just stop eating dumb stuff.
And that's like 95% of it. And the, and you know what the
dumb stuff is? It's what your grandmother told
you was the dumb stuff. It still is.
Like just don't do that and you're going to be better off,
(41:04):
you know, just try and move more.
Whatever you got to do. If you can get a strength
training program, that's a good idea.
I have seen all your dumb thingsI've seen like cardiovascular
fitness erodes your strength. That's dumb.
That's not true. Yeah, you need them both, you
(41:26):
know, try and figure out how to keep your chronic stressed out.
I'm very pro hormetic stress. That's what going to the gym is.
How do you? How do you spell that?
Hormetic. HORMETIC.
OK, it's. Like it sounds.
Yeah, I have never heard that one.
Yeah, hormetic. Adaptation is so when you apply
a stress, you, you become impacted by it, but then you
(41:49):
adapt to it. So this can be done, you know,
for instance, socially. So some people may be very
stressed in social situations, but as you continue to go into
them, you adapt. And so then you're, you become a
resilient. If you, if somebody dropped me
in China right now and said you must or in Mandarin, I'm
(42:09):
massively stressed. But then as I sort of adjust, I
learn it and I and I go to a higher level.
And it's, that's how strength training, raising cardiovascular
training, all the same idea. So that's, those are the good
ones. The bad ones are the sort of
corrosive things that, and it's the little stuff.
It's like, oh man, there's a RIPin the screen door.
(42:30):
There's a RIP in the screen door.
Oh, I got to fix the RIP in the street.
And it's just like these like niggling things or the financial
stuff that I pay the bill that Ilike.
You got to find a way to ratchetthat down.
And some people meditate, some people go bowling, some people
walk in the woods, some people, you know, hang out with their
buddies, whatever that is. Find what works for you and do
(42:54):
that. Why do you think it's men that
tend to be fixated on longevity more than women?
I mean, what, You know, women live seven years longer than us
on average in the US and and yetit it tends to be men who are
obsessed with their length. Excuse the expression.
Well. It's a, I think it's, it's sort
(43:18):
of a goal achievement thing. So men are much more numerically
driven by goal achievement. I, I, I know like I am.
It's just like, how can I, whatever The thing is, how,
what's the number on it? How can I make it more?
And I think women are a lot moreeasygoing about these things.
They tend not to be as not as. Competitive.
(43:42):
I mean, in some ways they're more collegial and more social.
They're, you know, part of the, you know, women, women are so
much better at social. I mean, you know, men are so men
wake up in in their 50s, like they're lonely, but they don't
even have a word for it. And they don't even want to, you
know, they don't want to be the L word.
And, and, and so the, the bottomline is men fuel that
(44:03):
competitive spirit and like, OK,I'm going to, I'm going to do
this. So and, and any thoughts at all
on Brian Johnson and Venice Beach?
I mean, good, bad, indifferent. I know.
I know Brian. Brian is the single most unusual
person I have ever interviewed and possibly ever met.
I like Brian. I like what he's trying to.
(44:26):
I like that he's has moved this discussion more in the
mainstream. It's very much, it's very
performative. I don't like that he's doing
things. He has a very large audience and
he's doing things like getting gene editing at Roatan Island,
(44:46):
which I think is crazy dangerous.
Can you hear that? Thunder and I hope, I hope
everybody is hearing that I meanwhat what what used to be a
beautiful view has just become arainstorm in New York so I like.
Brian. I find him quite charming and
he's extraordinarily odd to speak to him is, but I I think
(45:13):
he's a good guy. There are a number of people in
this field, in the longevity field.
A lot of them have a lot of letters after the name and
they're quite famous and they are not good people and they
they're up to no good. I don't think you're going to
get hurt doing anything Brian tells you to do, so it so.
(45:34):
Piece of advice and then I have one last question for you.
The piece of advice, let's say an entrepreneur who was 35 years
old comes to to you, David, and says, you know, you have a sense
of like where longevity and health and vitality is going.
You have a sense of the 50 plus market.
If I'm an entrepreneur, I'm 35 years old and I'm going to
(45:55):
actually put together a businessplan for something that really
is reading the future. Not something that's early
today, but something that peopleare going to be looking for for
the future. Do you have any suggestions for
that entrepreneur? I can.
I can tell you, and there's a lot of people trying to do this,
they have not done it successfully.
And I've talked to a few people are getting sort of close to it.
(46:18):
So the sort of Holy Grail is right now we have a lot of
information on our bodies. So we have wearables, we can do
a lot of blood testing, you can do scans, you take supplements,
all this stuff. If you take this to a doctor,
you are flooding them with information that they cannot
makes sense of. AI can do that.
And so I think what you're goingto see in the you're starting to
(46:43):
see it, they haven't done it toowell.
Like function doesn't do it verywell, but there will be other,
there are others that are betterthat are coming out.
So I think being able to make a something that's people will use
they'll that's something that's compelling where it tells you I
(47:05):
get a text or I get a phone callor I get something in the
morning and it says, David, you didn't, you know, for today, you
need to eat this and you need todo this based on yesterday and,
you know, having sort of regularblood work and regular updates.
And this thing would also have aclinical level in it.
That's where the all this stuff fails at the moment.
There's no clinical in there. So there will be some sort of a
(47:28):
clinical level in, in this. And I think that you will see
probably in a year, two years, something like this, and it will
make your doctor's life a lot easier because the AI will be
able to digest all this information in a way that no
human can. You're going to, you know, it's
(47:48):
just, there's just like too manybetween your, your Biome and
your genome and all the blood work and everything.
And this idea of actually personalized medicine, because
what medicine is now, even if you get into the longevity
stuff, the other stuff is just sick care.
So assuming you want to live longer, this is based on
(48:11):
probability data distribution. And you see data is generally
comes out in a bell curve. And so they're going to say, OK,
for most people, this is the deal.
I can tell you if you take ten of these things, one of us is
going to be way out on the tail of something.
So it's these, these, this sort of science is really useful as a
(48:31):
starting point on the other hand.
I hear the engineer coming out. The engineer.
It's it's basically useless because the only number you want
to know is you. The north of one that is you.
That's all that matters. And the way all these bits fit
together with you at the moment is humanly impossible to
(48:53):
understand. So it falls back into this sort
of probability of like, well, wethink maybe why don't we try
this, then we'll test you in another few days.
If you, if you want like a $500 billion idea, figure that out
how to put all that together andthen intersect with the
healthcare system and get insure.
If you figure out insurance codes on that.
(49:13):
Oh, my God, you got a gold mine.Yeah, that is.
That is Maha. That's the Make America Healthy
Again. That would be a very great
initiative. Do you wear or ring or like a
wearable or anything like that? And what do you think about the
wearables? And then I have one last
question. Wearables.
Are great unless you are an obsessive, if you have an if you
(49:34):
have an obsessive personality, somebody who is going to worry
about what their or their whoop or anything is good going to get
you on their sleep score. Get rid of it.
That's not for you if you're notthat person.
These things, this is information.
So my sleep efficiency is, it's insanely high.
It's like in the 9597%. But it took me a long time to
(49:58):
figure that out because I wear at night, I wear something
called a whoop, which is similarto an aura.
And so I know these are the things I, because you see this
cause and effect, right? I did this, therefore this
happened. Oh, do more of this or less than
this and you sort of figure thisout.
And I think that tracking is about, as I said, feelings are
(50:20):
not facts. So is my deep sleep more or
less, did I really walk this many steps or do I just think I
did? Did I, you know, where are where
am I really? I think is it's very useful.
Again, for a certain kind of person, it's not a good idea
(50:40):
that is. So true.
No one's ever said that. I've asked that question before.
No one's ever said that. So that makes so much sense
because I know some people lose sleep because we're wearing the,
the aura ring or the whoop or whatever.
Yes, last question. Someone 20 years, 30 years
younger than you comes to you and just says, you know what,
David, I want to tap into your wisdom.
(51:02):
I want you, you've, you've liveda good life.
You've, you know, your, your painful life lessons are the raw
material for your future wisdom.I want to learn from your
lessons. Can I have tea with you next
week and you can tell me what your wisdom bumper sticker is?
That maybe a singular wisdom about anything in your life, any
part of your life that feels like it has your wisdom
(51:25):
fingerprints on it. And is there an origin story
that's helped you to learn that lesson?
I. Would say.
I mean, I think about the William James stuff about
greatness. You go.
Back 100 years there. Yeah, I will tell.
Them the thing that you fear most is your own greatness and
owning that greatness. And this is your greatest
challenge. The vast, vast majority of
(51:45):
people, according to Mr. James, and I believe this, live far
below the limits of their capacity.
And I would tell this person you're doing that so you can do
incredible things. You can have an enormous impact
on the people around you. You can do things that are far,
(52:06):
far beyond your imagination, butyou need to get going.
This sounds. Like David talking to his high
school counselor, It's what you wish your high school counselor
had said to you. This.
Is my motivation. I will tell you my goal in life
is to embrace my greatness and to achieve it like my I'm very
(52:27):
internally motivated Chip. I don't I'm not that concerned
about what people think of me. What I am concerned about is
what I think of me and if I think I am achieving my
greatness, whatever that is, that's great.
The thing I do not want to have,the thing that really motivates
me is at some point I'm going todie.
And I don't want 5 minutes before I die to say to myself,
(52:48):
you know, I, I could have been acontender.
Now fuck that. I am a contender and I'm going
to do that thing. And that's, that's what
motivates me. And I think, I mean, I think
that if a young person came to me, I would say you need to get
moving right now. You need to take actions.
Actions lead to results. It life is all about test and
(53:10):
learn. Go do some shit.
I don't care what it is, becausewhatever it is, you're going to
learn from it. It's good or bad, OK, whatever.
Like it's not going to it's not going to kill you, whatever it
is. So get out there and do that.
Become useful, become the best version of yourself.
I mean, for me, because I'm in, you know, I'm motivated the way
I am, but you can. It's all about being useful out
(53:33):
there in the world and figuring out.
Every. Single one of us has this
greatness that we can tap into to help other people, to improve
the world. But you don't figure that out
sitting in your mom's basement watching video games.
Like get outside. Like get to fucking work.
(53:57):
Like meet new people, take risks, start stuff, and you will
learn things about yourself and about the world and you can move
closer to that greatness that you have that is.
Really good as we get older, I think it's really good.
I mean, that's a bumper sticker and a full that's a full
manifesto, my friend. So yes, as we get older, some of
(54:18):
us get really obsessed with being youthful, but at the end
of the day, it's about being useful.
That's the. Whole that is the name of the
game people. Oh boy, you got me agitated now.
So I, I hear this sort of stuff all the time.
It's like, oh, I'm, I'm thinkingabout following my passion.
It's like, what the fuck? You're going to like make sand
candles in Bali or something. No, get out there and get to
(54:39):
work. Like if you are useful, that
becomes your passion. When people count on you, when
people are saying like, oh, I need, I need you like whoever it
is, you're helping your neighbortake their garbage out, whatever
it is like that's the name of the game.
That's what propels you forward.This whole longevity thing.
It's not about putting numbers on the board.
(55:00):
How long can we live or a biomarkers?
No, no. How long can be useful?
How much more usefulness can be put out there if we're healthy?
I'm going to be quiet now, no. I listen, I like the great
ending the fat lady has sung You're no fat lady, that's for
sure. But that was a great way on a
passionate note to end and and you don't care what other people
(55:21):
think about you. But I love you, my friend.
Thank you for joining us on the midlife chrysalis.
I look forward to seeing you. Glad that your knee is
recovering and I hope to see yousoon.
Me. Too.
Thank you for having me, Chip. So my friend David has just
(55:41):
given me an idea, which is I want to actually interview him
and do another podcast episode about his life with Andy Warhol.
So as a famous photographer in the Andy Warhol universe, I
would love to hear more about that.
But if I were to actually summarize the three lessons I
got from Dave, one one of them comes down to something he
actually struggled with earlier in his life, which is this
(56:03):
autoimmune illness and, and the fact that nobody could explain
it. And ultimately it led to his
chrysalis, his midlife chrysalisaround the idea of exploring his
health, his nutrition, all of the kinds of things that led to
stress in his life, where he lived, etcetera.
And so in many ways, sometimes, you know, for me, I had AI, had
(56:25):
a MDE experience at age 47. It changed my life.
I transformed myself, sold my company.
I've had cancer more recently. It's changed how I'm eating.
It's how I it's changed my perspective on my company in
terms of elevating a bunch of people on the leadership team
and having somebody as ACEO, something I never did when I was
joie de vive, but MEA has ACEO, Derek Gale, who does an amazing
(56:48):
job. So Long story short is sometimes
that health crisis is going to lead to lifestyle changes and
maybe even career changes. And I think that was one of my
key lessons in this episode. Secondly, I, I loved when he was
talking about this gig, he had the multi $1,000,000 gig doing
(57:09):
photography for AT&T and almost everybody who was there for the
AT&T video and photography shoots were young people.
So AT&T was basically trying to sell cell service to, to their
customers, but instead of actually having older people,
often who are the young people are on the cellular plan of the
(57:31):
older person. Almost everybody who they were
actually taking photos of were young people.
And so David was just like the the sort of naive guy saying,
why are we doing this? And what he found from the
advertising industry was they just like photographing young
people, partly because they're better looking at by
conventional standards. And because the whole premises,
(57:54):
if you can catch them early, they'll have brand loyalty the
rest of their life. And David has spent the last,
you know, dozen years really debunking some of those myths,
helping people to see that, you know, there's most of the
disposable income and wealth in in the United States is for
people 50 and older. And lots of young people are
(58:15):
brand loyal for two or three years and then they're no longer
brand loyal. I just love the fact that his
his super age and ageist products, these two companies,
he has really came out of that, you know, aha moment, the
epiphany he had when he was on that, that photo shoot.
And then finally, he, he introduced a term that I'm going
(58:38):
to start speaking more, which isage dysmorphia.
Age dysmorphia, the idea that you actually look in the mirror
at 66 and you see a 46 year old.The fact, I mean, I've known
that for a long time is that we,we underestimate our age.
But to call it age dysmorphia, sometimes we have weight
dysmorphia, bodies dysmorphia, which means we see ourselves as
(59:00):
skinnier or fatter than we are. And it it in essence, we have a
a it's like going to the the funhouse at the carnival and
seeing, Oh, my body looks very different because the mirrors is
misshaping you. So we do that with our age.
We do that with our age all the time when we actually think, you
(59:21):
know, sort of think of ourselvesas younger, as if we don't want
to see advertising for someone our age.
And so in some ways it's not just the advertising industry
that has gotten us into where weare where it, you know, in ads,
you just see young people. It's also our own ageism, our
sense that we are aspirations. We want to look like and be like
(59:41):
that person 20 years younger than us.
So hope you enjoyed it. We'll see you next week.
Thanks. For listening to the Midlife
Chrysalis, this show is producedby Midlife Media.
If you enjoyed this episode, help us spread the word by
subscribing and leaving a reviewon your favorite platform.
The thing that you fear most is your own greatness and owning
that greatness, and this is yourgreatest challenge.
The vast, vast majority of people, according to Mr. James
and I believe this, live far below the limits of their
capacity. You can do incredible things.
You can have an enormous impact on the people around you.
You can do things that are far, far beyond your imagination, but
(00:24):
you need to get going. Welcome to the Midlife Chrysalis
Podcast with Chip Conley, where we explore how midlife isn't a
crisis, but a chrysalis, a time of profound transformation that
can lead to the most meaningful chapter of your life.
Chip Conley, I'm here. I just got off this episode with
(00:47):
David Stewart, who is maybe one of the best known photographers
in the world, who in midlife realized that he wanted to study
ageism. And he, you know, he was famous
in the advertising industry. And then he said like this
industry's ageist. So he created something called
Ageist and then he created something called Super Age.
And he's one of the biggest thought leaders in the world on
(01:08):
the topic of how do we live our lives in our 50s and beyond,
especially focused on the physical side of things.
So while many of my podcast episodes focus on the emotional
and the spiritual side, this onewas very focused on the
physical, especially on longevity.
And so for those of you out there who are a little curious
about some hacks that are going to help you with your longevity
(01:30):
and living a longer, healthier, happier life, I think you'll
enjoy this episode. Well, hello, David.
Hey, Jeff, good to see you. Where are you?
Where are we catching you? In LA or in In Miami or in.
You. Hi me.
That's the East River, so I'm inManhattan.
You're in Manhattan, OK. Is that so?
That's actually. That's not a virtual background.
(01:51):
That is, that is. That boat there is moving, yeah.
Oh wow, it is. You were.
You were in New York a long time, weren't you originally?
Yeah, I, I mean, I came here as a basically a kid in 78 and then
I moved back here. Then I went to school for a
while and then I came here, I think in 84, and I was here for
(02:13):
a long time, I guess about 30 years or so, like kind of off
and on. I did some time in Miami, some
time in Paris, but basically here.
And then I did a stint in LA andnow I'm back here.
When you had a. Little Park City time there too,
didn't you there? Was there was that sort of COVID
like weird? Like I got marooned in this ski
resort, which I thought was likea couple of weeks, and I was
(02:34):
there for four years. Well, and that was during during
that time to, to give some background on our relationship,
you and I did a happy hour. So we were all stuck at home.
And I think it was your suggestion like, like let's do
you, you had an online magazine online community called Aegis.
And I, we had Mea. And frankly, Mea was not, we
(02:55):
didn't have any people coming toour our campuses.
And so we had Norma Kamali and and Danny Meyer, the
restauranteur and just, you know, we had some fun with that.
But yeah, tell, tell us, give. I'd love to have you give us the
origin story of David because I really actually don't know.
I know for 40 years or so you have been a moderately famous
(03:19):
commercial, moderately very famous commercial photographer.
The kind of your client list is like the Fortune 500 companies
in the world. But I don't know the the origin
story of who you grew up as and how did you end up in that path?
Yes. So we're going to go back there
and I know you, this is just, everybody knows David doesn't
(03:40):
love like that. Like, oh, like Chip being the
psychologist here, I promise youI will not do too much
psychology. OK, so I grew up in upstate New
York. My parents divorced.
I was about 12. I was about 12, I want to say.
So it's like 1970, which is kindof a weird, like that just
didn't happen then. And then my mom and my brother
(04:03):
myself moved to a little town South of Rochester, NY called
Geneseo, which is like, I don't know, 4 or 5000 people.
And there's a State College and my mom was a school teacher.
And so I was like a latchkey kidas sort of everyone was in those
times, but maybe maybe more thanothers.
(04:24):
And I was sort of a shy kid and I was small for my age.
And I, I quickly found out that some of my ideas and thinking
were not very well received withmy classmates and some of the,
the teachers. So I learned to just sort of
keep my mouth shut, keep my headdown.
(04:44):
But I always did, I always did really well on these
standardized tests. But I remember my, so if you
want me to, if you want to really get my attention, tell me
I can't do something. So My, my high school guidance
counselor took me aside and said, well, we're not sure that
you're really cut out for a fouryear school.
You should probably go to like atwo year state school or
(05:06):
something. And, and I was like, you don't
understand. So I, I decided to, I, I like,
you know, this is the guidance stuff.
Like, what do you do? How much money does different
things make? And so were those two things
maximum money of like sort of, you know, which in my aptitudes
(05:28):
was engineering. So it was like, OK, I'm an
engineer. So I went to, I studied
mechanical engineering at Rochester Institute of
Technology, which to this day isstill that back then that was
like joining the Marines. It was like, it was not PC.
You got yelled at up at the board.
It was intense. But I did, I, you know, I could
(05:52):
do it. I, it was OK, but I felt like it
was really limiting to me. I, I, I was getting a technical
education. I knew that I wanted to sort of
broaden my mind. I wanted to, I was reading a lot
of other things and we get pictures and stuff.
So after I did 2 years of that and I had a Co-op job in the
summer and after that I was like, oh I really don't want to
do this. I was just like sitting at a
(06:12):
desk and like no, that's not my,that's not my thing.
So I left and I studied political science at Boston
University. I tried to go to fancier
schools, but they told me I wasn't smart enough.
So I didn't get into Columbia. I couldn't get into any of these
little like fancier school. So I went to BU and I studied
political science because it hadthe word science in it.
So I thought, OK, I can that sort of parallel somehow, but it
(06:36):
was so much easier than going toengineering school.
I so I went to BU full time at night.
I studied photography at this little technical school in
Kenmore Square called New England School Photography.
And I got myself a part time joband I was still out all night
doing stuff because it was just compared to what I had done.
(06:56):
This was just like nothing. So I started with photography.
I I think I got my first camera when I was like 6 or 7.
I always really like them. And then because as only a 22
year old can, upon leaving school, I declared myself a
photographer and therefore I was, I started like right away
(07:19):
working because back then you had to have a real grasp of like
some kind of you. I need to go with technology
there. Wasn't there was definitely a
science piece to this? Oh 100%.
There was like a craft to it. Like it was.
You had to understand the chemistry and like there was
like there was no autofocus. It was like there was a skill,
(07:40):
there was a, there's a Moat of askill around it.
And, and I was able to understand that easily.
You know, 24, I think I had my first ad in Vogue.
And then I moved to Paris. I think I was like 25 or so.
And then I worked for the magazines there for a while and
then I came back and then I moved to New York.
And then when you moved to, at least in that time when you
(08:02):
moved to New York, nobody cared about anything you've done
anywhere else. If you hadn't done in New York,
you were zero. So I started working when Andy
Warhol had interview. Maybe it's like a whole that was
like, that was a scene. That could be a separate podcast
that's. Just like a the whole Andy
(08:25):
scene. And then I started working for,
you know, the kind of mass magazines and Hearst magazines.
Originally new fashion, but thenI moved into portrait stuff and
then I started making the money was in advertising.
So I started doing that and thensort of smaller stuff, but then
(08:46):
like bigger American Express, Nike, sort of big stuff.
And lot of did a lot of, I don'tknow, maybe like a dozen covers
in the New York Times Magazine back when that was a thing and
too much of that stuff. And so I, I got really sick.
I was living in Paris at that point.
I think it was about 4000 and 50, and I was working sort of
(09:08):
Paris, NY, LA Paris. That sounds very glamorous, but
what it really means is you're aperma jet lag.
You're just like, what day is it?
What currency? What's the language?
So I got this weird autoimmune disease, probably because of the
lifestyle I was living, and I spent the better part of a year
in a hospital. How?
Old were you? You were between 40 and 50.
You were in your 40s. 4849 something like that.
(09:30):
It's a low point on the euchre of happiness, OK?
Well, yeah, this wasn't, I wasn't even thinking of
happiness. I was thinking like like.
Survival. Like survival, like not not
bleed to death tonight so that Ican see tomorrow.
And they were I was just a science experiment.
Like they're he's like medicinesreally greatly break your arm.
(09:51):
It's great. You got some like weirdo auto.
I mean, my autoimmune thing was like it was like a pediatric
thing. So most of the people on my
board were like those little kids or sometimes women get it
after childbirth. And but, and then there's like
me. So eventually what happened was
they were giving, I was getting these things called IDIGS, which
(10:14):
are human. They're very expensive human
blood treatment that I would get.
But there's a lot of risk to that if you're getting these all
the time. So, and they weren't working as
well. And they always told me like the
this 60% chance of curing this thing as we take your spleen
out. And I was like organ removal
that sounds. Can we talk about that a little
(10:36):
more? That seems a little rash.
But then it was just like, OK, Igive up after a year of this.
And I was just, you know, like walking across the room was a
challenge. I, it was.
So anyway, I have my spleen out and then everything got better,
but I realized like life needs to change.
(10:58):
Like so I left New York, I movedto Los Angeles and that was
better. And I started paying more
attention to my health, not in anot a really directed way, but
just like what, what can I do here to work out better?
And then when I was 56, I started the investigation that
(11:23):
became ageist. So I'm 66 now.
So that was about no, that soundwas 54.
It's 12 years ago. Oh my God.
So I started this investigation of why was all the messaging
aimed at people like me this week, like really weirdly
medicalized infantilizing the couple with the dockers on the
beach with the dog. They walk the bike because it's
(11:44):
too dangerous for them to ride the bike.
So they push the bike like it's just like, what is this?
Let me just say, let me do a quick interruption because so
your health journey was like what we would call the midlife
chrysalis. It was, you might call it a
crisis, but it really what a chrysalis is a time of
(12:05):
transformation. And on the other side of that,
something is better. And that is our one of our
basic, you know, pieces of ethosat, at MEA.
And you know that you're an MEA faculty member.
So you had this midlife chrysalis.
It sort of woke you up to your health.
This was. Not a white light experience.
This was very gradual. OK, let's.
(12:26):
Let's acknowledge it was gradualand at the same time, as someone
who has spent his whole career in the packaging, you know,
making people look good and making and the advertising
business and Madison Ave. And you know, if, if in many
ways, our, our aegis culture hasa lot to do with Madison Ave.
(12:48):
and Hollywood. And so all of a sudden you got
this click in your head, this this sort of epiphany, what we
would call at at MEA and Baja, the Baja Aha.
You got this sense that you wanted to explore this a little
bit further. Why is it that we live in an
(13:08):
Aegis culture? Keep going.
So there was. Something that happened that
caused this. So I don't know if I'm getting
in trouble if I tell you the story, but OK, I'm going to tell
you the story. So what happened was I got hired
by Vice Media when Vice was, I don't know, Vice still exists,
but it was sort of like a thing then.
(13:28):
And so I got hired to do this job for AT&T and they brought me
on. I was, I was 54 at the time.
I was more than twice as old as the art director.
I was like, I don't know, 30 years old and the creative
director, but I was like, definitely the oldest person in
the room. And but they brought me in
(13:50):
because they knew like I could sort of like deliver, like I
could like do this thing and nobody.
It was interesting there, you know, it was very like super hip
cool, but they were fine with me.
I never got, I never got any sort of like, you know, just
like they just treated me like somebody else.
(14:10):
So anyway, we did this thing, soit was for AT&T, it was an out
of home thing, which means billboards.
And we did, I think we did 60 ofthem.
It was a huge, huge job. It was like a 7 figure like all
around the country. So major thing.
And so at the end of it, I was at this point I'm just a
photographer. So but I'm taught, you know, you
(14:31):
talk to the people, you talk to the talent.
So I say at the end, I said, do you know that 59 of the people
we photographed are on their parents contract?
They are not the customer. Like why are we?
I understand they're part of thedecision making cascade on what
sort of cell phone they want, but they're not the ones who buy
(14:54):
this. Why?
I don't understand. And so they said to me, well, we
market to younger people becausethat's what we know how to do.
And I said, but did you tell AT&T this?
And they're like, Oh no, Oh no, we wouldn't tell them that.
I said I was just like, what up?This is the craziest thing I've
ever heard. So that was a white light
(15:15):
moment. That was like, there is a
massive disconnect here. I need to understand this.
So I did. So what I did, Chip, is I was
like, I this is the craziest thing I've ever heard.
And so I spent a month in this deep dive exploration of why
this was, and I came to an understanding of why this
(15:36):
marketing was done this way and why people do this and why all
this money is spent for this consumer base that does not buy
the product, which seemed lunacyto me.
And so I go back to them and I say, guys, like, let me show you
some numbers here. The people you're marketing to,
this is how much money they got.It's like nothing.
These other people over here, they have all this money and
actually they buy the stuff. Nobody's over here, it's all
(16:00):
white space. We can own this.
This would be fantastic. And the guy he, he was an
English guy, used to work for the FT really smart guy.
And he looks at me and he says, that's terrific.
But you're asking me to time travel into the future.
I can't do that. We we're we can't do that.
I thought I can do that and that's.
(16:20):
Where ages came about, that's where it.
Started that was like, and therewas a lot more investigation and
then thousands of hours of videointerviews trying to understand,
to essentially de brainwash myself to understand why this
was happening, why these people were portrayed in a certain way.
And it basically just comes downto laziness, that it's just much
(16:44):
harder to talk to people our agethan it is to a 20 year old
because a 20 year old is that though I don't.
Understand that why is it harder?
Why is it harder to talk to us? Oh, it's.
Way harder because a 20 year oldis a monoculture, a global
monoculture. They're all the same.
Now, if you tell them that they're going to get pissed off,
but they they know all the same cultural cues, they listen to
(17:07):
the same music, they're pretty much in the same thing.
What happens is the is the demo gets older.
It splits like radically on all fronts.
So like you and I at our age compared to like my wife's
relatives in North Georgia is a different planet.
You cannot talk to these people the same.
(17:29):
So the fail that happens is in that form of communication to
people our age is they look at this and I, I can't tell you how
many of these like Stanford finance Bros I've been around
the table with who tried this. And they're like, oh, look at
all this white space. Oh, we want it all.
We want it all right now. But no, dude, you can't do that.
You got to pick a tight lane because it's so different.
(17:53):
And the, the fail was, this was the, the huge finding that we
did was that we could not understand why these really
smart people were failing so badly.
They were, you know, they're using quant peeps.
The quant is like, where does somebody live?
What's their education, what's their income level, health
(18:14):
status, things like that to, to sort of put people into
categories or archetypes. And what we realized was that's
all nice, but what you, you wantto know one thing and one thing
only. How does that person perceive
their physicality in the future?If you know that you got the
whole ball of wax, the rest of it doesn't matter.
(18:36):
But that that was the thing. And once we understood that,
that sort of unlocked like the whole Aegis journey.
Explain. What Aegis is and then also
explain in the last dozen years,are you happy with the
transition or the evolution of the advertising industry And
(18:58):
let's let's recognize advertising is a whole different
beast today than at what used tobe in the era of social media
etcetera. But do you think that like
Madison Ave. and Hollywood is getting it?
That's such an. Interesting question, Pregnant.
Pause, pregnant pause, basically.
Madison Ave. and Hollywood are quickly becoming irrelevant.
(19:19):
Madison Ave. is irrelevant. Hollywood is a couple of years
away from being totally irrelevant, so it gets tricky.
One of the reasons it's much harder to talk to people our age
is because we suffer from age dysmorphia, explain.
Explain SO. I look in the mirror, I'm 66.
I see someone who's 46 for thosewho are.
(19:41):
Not seeing David right now. This guy looks like he's 46.
I, I just want to say he's leaner and smelter than any 66
year old. I know we'll come back to that.
We're going to talk about the health journey, but let me just
say in your case it works. In my case, not so much.
At 64, so. This is one of the, the, the,
the difficulties is when someone's 20, they pretty much
(20:04):
feel like they're 20 because they don't have the history
behind them. As people get older, there's
this funny thing that happens where the sense of our age is
really volatile and it depends on did I sleep well last night?
What do I look? It's not, it's just not a fixed
thing. But in general, the, you know,
(20:27):
the studies that we've done, it's there's about a 20 year
delta between how old you are and how old you think you are.
So if you think, you know, in myOK, so I think I'm 46.
Do I want to see pictures of people who are typically 66,
which is my age, or do I identify with people who are 20
(20:48):
years younger than me? So this is the tremendous
challenge of and in advertising,you see it, it's most acute in
the beauty industry. It's it's the and I and I,
whatever we think of what they're doing, I can tell you
they try really, really hard andthey have the hardest job on the
(21:12):
planet. It's just an impossible, they
are an impossible place. So that's that's one of the
things. And so now we're you know, Aegis
is now 10 years into this. We're we're you know, we started
out sending a newsletter to fifty of our friends.
Our grand vision was they would remain our friends.
And now we have this, you know, much bigger thing, this
(21:34):
international thing. And then that led to what I'm
doing now, which is Super Age, which we launched in November.
And this is much bigger fish, much bigger pond.
So explain. I have over 1.2 million readers.
After seven months, I have an open rate of 50% at that scale.
(21:58):
Like nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody has that.
And it's really about if you letpeople, if you see people and
you serve people and you do it in a trustworthy way, it
resonates. What's the?
Difference between the two I I Iknow this the answer but I want
(22:19):
to have you explain the difference between ages because
they both still exist. Ages and super age very.
Valid question, I get this askedall the time.
So super age wouldn't exist without ages.
There was 10 years of learning that went in to super age.
Ages by its very name is againstsomething.
It was it's a real F you. It was just like because when we
(22:42):
when we started this chip, like the names out there were just
like, oh, silver golden Lib, like what, like come on.
So we just decided to just go like full punk rock.
And it's like, no, we're ages. And so people will ask me like,
Oh, that's a negative. And I say really, a biologist is
really their study biology. I didn't know really.
(23:03):
So super age is not pushing against anything.
It's, it's up and down the age column because in the last 10
years, the things that we found were very important to people
who were over 50. And, and mind you, we only show
people over 50 in ages. 40% of that audience is under 50 and
(23:26):
like 20% of it is under 30. So we realized there was this
resonance up and down the age column because the things we
were talking about were important to everyone.
Like, do you want to live healthier, happier and longer?
OK, that's somewhat universal and that's what super age is
about. So it's.
Sort of age fluid. I mean, it's, it's a cross.
(23:47):
It's, it's, it's, you know, it's, it doesn't really depend
upon your chronological age because let's be honest, we have
more than a chronological age that we have a, we, we have a,
you know, a cognitive age. We have a heart age.
We have a, we have all kinds of,we have a mindset age.
So, you know, I, I think in the future we're going to, you know,
(24:08):
you go in for a job interview and well, they, they would, no
one would ask what age you are. But the truth is, you could be
so many ages today because it's not.
It just, it isn't just, you know, the chronological age of
what's under on your driver's license.
Somewhat meaningless statistic like that, like it's a data
point, OK, but it's not. It's like what is your mindset?
(24:32):
What is what is your view of yourself?
What is your view of the world? How are I mean, I know 25 year
olds that have self fossilized. OK right.
And I know 80 year olds that arelike wild, vividly creative and
curious and like out there doingstuff and you.
Profile them very well in ages. So I, I, I just want everybody
(24:54):
to know that that's it's a greatplace to see personalities and
people who just are age fluid intheir life.
They do not, they're not defining themselves based upon
their generation or their age. They're all the ages they've
ever been or will ever be. So, yeah, I, I think that we
live in an era where the road map of the past are that our
(25:17):
parents had or that the world sort of put out for us doesn't
make sense anymore. I mean, it's really people are
on such different paths from age50 and beyond.
So I want to hear your story about your health though,
because you know, you say it wasa long, slow process from your
(25:37):
late 40s until maybe 56 or so when you when you really started
leaning in to being the, the lean, he leaned into being lean
and leaned into longevity and you leaned into really studying
your, your level of knowledge. I mean, there's lots of famous
(25:58):
people out there around longevity.
Mark Hyman taught at MEA and there's, you know, Peter Attias,
probably maybe the the most famous one right now, but you're
you're in that class. And so talk a little bit about
your own personal journey aroundhealth because you're much in
much better shape today than youwere 30 years ago and at 66 and
(26:21):
also what you've learned about the body and the body mind
connection and you know what youknow, what are some tips?
Well, I'll. I'll tell you the technical
knowledge that I've gained, which is really kind of, I'm
going to think of it, it's amazing.
Like, and it's all pretty much from the podcasting that I've
(26:42):
done. So I've interviewed on my
podcast like like 200 the world's leading authorities on
and, and so I, you know, the nice thing about having a mind
is you can learn at any age. And so I have learned and so
it's become important to me to really understand these things.
And as you said, you know, we'renot living the same way.
(27:04):
And it's Mike Raisins, one of our friends.
He's the head of Wellness at theCleveland Clinic.
So he he was like 20 years ago. He said 60 is the new 40.
And it's now he's saying 90 is the new 40.
And So what we're seeing here isthat we are not everyone, but
there is a substantial and growing cohort of people that
(27:26):
are our age who we can read. I mean, it's not delusional to
think that you're going to live another 30-40, 50 years.
I mean, and so that for me was just sort of a slow.
It's like I'd sort of learn morethings.
It's like, oh, if I do this, this happens.
Oh, this is a better way to do that.
(27:48):
Oh yeah, don't do this other thing.
And it, it was just sort of, it became one of the things that I
learned from like I've had, I'vebeen injured.
I actually, I had, I had partialknee replacement six weeks ago
and when I was teaching at the MEAI was on crutches and I just
saw the pictures. It's sort of a little
(28:10):
antithetical. I'm talking about mobility and
health and Wellness on crutches.But Oh well.
What I realized was the, the interaction between the body and
the mind and how much these things intersect because you're
(28:30):
the, you know, our, our main publication at super age is
called the mindset. And the reason for that is if
you're, you need to have the mindset that says that this is
possible. And, and if you're a pessimist
and you think it's not possible,you know what I tell people is
(28:51):
if you're a pessimist, it doesn't matter how much
knowledge, the resources I give you, not you're not going to do
anything. You're just not going to do
anything. But if you are an optimist, you
will seek all these things out and you'll start finding what
works for you and you'll be finding a path forward.
And one of the things that we did when I was in MEA was I
(29:13):
thought it was really important to connect the, the amazing MEA
curriculum that you've developedover all these years, which is
just like much. I was like, this is really good.
They are really good at this. I'm turning red that to connect
(29:35):
that to this idea in one sphere,letting people know that they
can do more than they think theycan and then connect that to the
body. So there was, there was 1
gentleman, I'm not going to tellyou his name, but he was there.
And part of the thing was like, we, we had a little step and I
said, there's a box and I see he's got 2 feet.
(29:56):
And I said, I want you to jump up on the box, 2 feet, just jump
up. So he's like, and there's a bit
of a hesitation and he's about 70.
He's he's sporty guy. So he jumps on the two boxes.
I said, OK, great. 1 foot right leg jump on the box.
He's like, and he freezes. He's like, I can't do that.
I said, yeah, you can. He's like, no, I can't.
(30:16):
I said, come on over here. So I said one leg, I want you to
jump 2 feet forward. OK, he can do that.
OK, now do it again. Do it again.
Do it again. OK, Come back over the box.
One leg on the box. I'll catch you if you don't make
it. So it's not a big, it's about an
8 inch box. And he makes it right.
And so you you see in a flash his life just changed because he
(30:41):
saw he could do something that he didn't think was possible.
And suddenly once you do that, you question all, it just opens
up, right? What are the other sort of
stories that I'm telling myself that I can't do, that I can do?
I think there's something reallypowerful about connecting that
to the body and saying you're stronger, you're braver and more
(31:04):
capable than you think you are here in the same way in the
classroom. And some of the other lessons
that we're learning here about what we can do out in the world
emotionally or intellectually, business wise relationships.
But if you can, if you can bringthis other piece in, oh that,
then it's like there's somethingabout like there's something
(31:26):
about that that little thing, Chip.
It's one thing if you sort of tell somebody theoretically in a
classroom or you can do these things, but you take them
outside and you say jump on the box.
It's a little thing there. It's like, oh, this all makes
sense. That's.
Embodied wisdom. I mean, wisdom is this thing you
learn based upon life experience, but when it's
physical, it's even more tangible.
(31:48):
It's like it's, you know, it's, it's woven into your DNA almost.
It's immediate. It's like right there, I'm on
the box. I never thought I would be on
the box so. Mindsets are so important.
And you know, for those who don't know it, Becca Levy at
Yale has done, you know, research on this for 20 years
and, and shown that frankly, when you can shift your mindset
in midlife about aging from a negative, going from anti aging
(32:12):
to pro aging. And I don't want to say pro
aging. I don't mean we just want to get
old faster. I just mean that we see some of
the unexpected pleasures of getting older and we see some of
the upside of what we can do to make ourselves feel better.
If you can do that, go from negative to positive, you gain 7
1/2 years of additional longevity, which is frankly
maybe longer than any of the current longevity hacks out
(32:33):
there. Yes, I think the longevity hacks
will catch up, especially as we get more, you know, more testing
and more data on it. But this mindset piece is so
essential. So I think it's great that the
magazine for Super age is calledMindset, but you also have
clients. So you super age is really a
platform for you to go out to industry and you know, and and
(32:58):
be, you know, you're sort of a pro AI don't want to call pro.
What would you call yourself? I call myself a midlife
activist. If you had to say you're an
activist, what would you say? You're a super age activist.
That's what you are. No, I sort.
Of feel like I'm a spectacle. You are a spectacle.
You're very entertaining. What would you call yourself?
Well. I I think first of all Super Age
at for all intents and purposes of media company and our job is
(33:23):
to inform, inspire people who read Super Age and and provide
them with tools to add to the menu of what entrusted tools to
what they can do. I will say that there are
probably you're not reading the mindset if you're a pessimist
(33:46):
and you're not going to, you're not going to be doing any of
that sort of longevity stuff if you're a pessimist because why
would you? Yeah.
You're going to die tomorrow. You know what?
Yes, exactly. Why you die tomorrow?
Why would I do this? We're all going to die.
Tomorrow, you know, I mean. So tell.
Me a little bit about so you studying this and and what in
terms of what's worked best for you if you were to distill it
(34:09):
down to maybe 3 tips whether it's you know sleep nutrition
food you know exercise what would be some of your key tips
that have worked for you so I look.
At this, I mean, sometimes people ask me to sort of stack
rank these things and I, I mean I, you could sort of I mean if
(34:31):
you you got to go to sleep, I think I sort of look at these
more as a Venn diagram and they all sort of intersect and when
they're all functioning togetherat that center point is how you
super age. And so the elements of the the
Venn would probably be sleep, nutrition, movement, exercise,
(34:56):
stress management and community purpose connection.
So it's sort of. Like the lifestyle medicine
area, you know, it's, it's, you're familiar with lifestyle
medicine. So for those who are not
familiar to just check out, you know, AI on lifestyle medicine
and you'll see that there's usually about 7 different
(35:17):
pillars of lifestyle medicine, many of which Dave just talked
about. But do you have a stack ranking?
Do you think sleeping sleeps themost important of them all?
I don't care how much. Vitamin C you're taking, if
you're not going to sleep, nothing works.
You're going to sleep, you sabotage the whole thing.
But if you they like these things interact you also, you
(35:39):
know, the number one longevity drug, bar none is fitness like
nothing, nothing comes close. I don't care how much rapamycin
you're taking, how much NAD whatever.
No, it's it's fitness. It's what's your VO.
You know, what's your cardiovascular fitness is
(36:00):
measured by VO2 Max. You know, what's your how much
muscle you got on yourself, What's your grip strength, stuff
like that. And why is?
Grip strength. Let's talk about grip strength
because that's become very hot topic.
So grip strength is I think seenas maybe the most important
proxy or the maybe the best proxy for understanding whether
(36:20):
how you're doing with your strength and, and, and, and why
is that? Well.
It is a proxy. So I mean, if you bought a
tennis ball, you squeezed it 10,000 times a day, this will
not increase your life expectancy.
But if you're doing pull ups andyou're doing you're lifting
weight, you're doing all this, all this stuff requires you
gripping thing. So that I think is where it
(36:41):
comes from. I don't, I might be wrong in
this, but I don't personally believe that having a a powerful
grip in and of itself. I mean, it is useful if you're
going to fall, you grab a rail or you can, you know, but it I,
I think it's like it's somethingthat gets dragged along with all
this other activity in in the same way.
The reason your cardiovascular fitness and especially things
(37:04):
like VO2 Max, which is your the sort of your maximum ability to
explain what. That is and and and.
Do you recommend that people asktheir doctor about doing a VO2
Max test? Yeah.
Yeah, you should. You should.
You know, I tell people feelingsare not facts like you, You
know, if you people don't die ofno one predicts they have a
(37:27):
feeling they're going to have a heart attack or they have a
feeling if something's wrong with them.
No, you need data and you need to back this up.
So a VO2 Max test is they put a mask on you and they put you on
a bike or something similar and they put a chest strap on you
and they read, they see how muchwhat you're essentially your
(37:47):
cardiovascular fitness is. And that is a very good
predictor of mortality. And the lovely thing about VO2
Max is you can make enormous improvements in the, in the fall
last year I was, my Apple Watch said that my VO2 Max I think was
like 34. And I thought, oh, that's not
very good. I got to do something about
this. So I decided to put myself on a
(38:10):
VO2 Max training program becauseas you will know, the, the main
motivator in David's life is to become the best version of David
he can. So I'm an endless self
improvement. So I thought, OK, I'm going to
do this. And then I was at a place in Los
Angeles and they test me for VO2Max.
I think it, I want to say it was48.
So 48 is an elite level for somebody who's like 30.
(38:31):
Now, I mind you, as anyone who'smet me, I'm not a super athlete.
It's just, I'm saying this because you can make like if you
decide to do this and it's not that hard, you can, you can make
enormous changes in your Physiology.
It's, it's one of those things, Chip, I tell people it's not too
(38:54):
late. I don't care how old you are,
it's not too late. I'm not saying this is easy.
You need to take actions. You can't just watch television
and expect for like this is something's going to happen to
you got to you. You have to do it.
But it's not like these impossible Herculean feats.
You can it's it's you know, anyway, so VO2 Max is a good
(39:15):
one. Yes, your doctor probably won't
test you for it. They probably don't have the
capacity, but they will probablybe some like, you know, little
place in your town that tests you for VO2 Max.
It's like 75 bucks. Get it, get it tested and then
you'll know where you stand. And you know what a Tia says is
you want to be at the elite level for the 10 year span
(39:36):
underneath you, which when I sawthat, wow, that's really hard.
But no, you, I mean, I did it. It's not you.
You can do it. Explain that.
So for the meaning, meaning if you're 65, you want to be for at
55, you want to be at the elite level.
At 55 you want to be the elite level at. 55 right, because it
it does fall off like everythingwith age but you can arrest this
(40:00):
and you can you can you can falloff from a higher level, which
is sort of a Tia's whole thing right?
Like it's the things going to fall off, but you get to choose
from what level they fall off from so.
What's a longevity hack that's gotten a lot of attention, but
you sort of laugh at it either. Like, I don't, I really don't
think that works so well. Oh God.
(40:21):
How much time do we have? There's just a lot of I feel
like every day I, I, somebody will send me something from
TikTok or some insanity rather than talk about what doesn't
work. It's like the stuff don't eat
(40:41):
stupid stuff, right? Like just, you know, there's all
this sort of like, oh, that you need to be a vegan, you need to
be a Carver, you need to be visited.
It's just like, OK, just stop eating dumb stuff.
And that's like 95% of it. And the, and you know what the
dumb stuff is? It's what your grandmother told
you was the dumb stuff. It still is.
Like just don't do that and you're going to be better off,
(41:04):
you know, just try and move more.
Whatever you got to do. If you can get a strength
training program, that's a good idea.
I have seen all your dumb thingsI've seen like cardiovascular
fitness erodes your strength. That's dumb.
That's not true. Yeah, you need them both, you
(41:26):
know, try and figure out how to keep your chronic stressed out.
I'm very pro hormetic stress. That's what going to the gym is.
How do you? How do you spell that?
Hormetic. HORMETIC.
OK, it's. Like it sounds.
Yeah, I have never heard that one.
Yeah, hormetic. Adaptation is so when you apply
a stress, you, you become impacted by it, but then you
(41:49):
adapt to it. So this can be done, you know,
for instance, socially. So some people may be very
stressed in social situations, but as you continue to go into
them, you adapt. And so then you're, you become a
resilient. If you, if somebody dropped me
in China right now and said you must or in Mandarin, I'm
(42:09):
massively stressed. But then as I sort of adjust, I
learn it and I and I go to a higher level.
And it's, that's how strength training, raising cardiovascular
training, all the same idea. So that's, those are the good
ones. The bad ones are the sort of
corrosive things that, and it's the little stuff.
It's like, oh man, there's a RIPin the screen door.
(42:30):
There's a RIP in the screen door.
Oh, I got to fix the RIP in the street.
And it's just like these like niggling things or the financial
stuff that I pay the bill that Ilike.
You got to find a way to ratchetthat down.
And some people meditate, some people go bowling, some people
walk in the woods, some people, you know, hang out with their
buddies, whatever that is. Find what works for you and do
(42:54):
that. Why do you think it's men that
tend to be fixated on longevity more than women?
I mean, what, You know, women live seven years longer than us
on average in the US and and yetit it tends to be men who are
obsessed with their length. Excuse the expression.
Well. It's a, I think it's, it's sort
(43:18):
of a goal achievement thing. So men are much more numerically
driven by goal achievement. I, I, I know like I am.
It's just like, how can I, whatever The thing is, how,
what's the number on it? How can I make it more?
And I think women are a lot moreeasygoing about these things.
They tend not to be as not as. Competitive.
(43:42):
I mean, in some ways they're more collegial and more social.
They're, you know, part of the, you know, women, women are so
much better at social. I mean, you know, men are so men
wake up in in their 50s, like they're lonely, but they don't
even have a word for it. And they don't even want to, you
know, they don't want to be the L word.
And, and, and so the, the bottomline is men fuel that
(44:03):
competitive spirit and like, OK,I'm going to, I'm going to do
this. So and, and any thoughts at all
on Brian Johnson and Venice Beach?
I mean, good, bad, indifferent. I know.
I know Brian. Brian is the single most unusual
person I have ever interviewed and possibly ever met.
I like Brian. I like what he's trying to.
(44:26):
I like that he's has moved this discussion more in the
mainstream. It's very much, it's very
performative. I don't like that he's doing
things. He has a very large audience and
he's doing things like getting gene editing at Roatan Island,
(44:46):
which I think is crazy dangerous.
Can you hear that? Thunder and I hope, I hope
everybody is hearing that I meanwhat what what used to be a
beautiful view has just become arainstorm in New York so I like.
Brian. I find him quite charming and
he's extraordinarily odd to speak to him is, but I I think
(45:13):
he's a good guy. There are a number of people in
this field, in the longevity field.
A lot of them have a lot of letters after the name and
they're quite famous and they are not good people and they
they're up to no good. I don't think you're going to
get hurt doing anything Brian tells you to do, so it so.
(45:34):
Piece of advice and then I have one last question for you.
The piece of advice, let's say an entrepreneur who was 35 years
old comes to to you, David, and says, you know, you have a sense
of like where longevity and health and vitality is going.
You have a sense of the 50 plus market.
If I'm an entrepreneur, I'm 35 years old and I'm going to
(45:55):
actually put together a businessplan for something that really
is reading the future. Not something that's early
today, but something that peopleare going to be looking for for
the future. Do you have any suggestions for
that entrepreneur? I can.
I can tell you, and there's a lot of people trying to do this,
they have not done it successfully.
And I've talked to a few people are getting sort of close to it.
(46:18):
So the sort of Holy Grail is right now we have a lot of
information on our bodies. So we have wearables, we can do
a lot of blood testing, you can do scans, you take supplements,
all this stuff. If you take this to a doctor,
you are flooding them with information that they cannot
makes sense of. AI can do that.
And so I think what you're goingto see in the you're starting to
(46:43):
see it, they haven't done it toowell.
Like function doesn't do it verywell, but there will be other,
there are others that are betterthat are coming out.
So I think being able to make a something that's people will use
they'll that's something that's compelling where it tells you I
(47:05):
get a text or I get a phone callor I get something in the
morning and it says, David, you didn't, you know, for today, you
need to eat this and you need todo this based on yesterday and,
you know, having sort of regularblood work and regular updates.
And this thing would also have aclinical level in it.
That's where the all this stuff fails at the moment.
There's no clinical in there. So there will be some sort of a
(47:28):
clinical level in, in this. And I think that you will see
probably in a year, two years, something like this, and it will
make your doctor's life a lot easier because the AI will be
able to digest all this information in a way that no
human can. You're going to, you know, it's
(47:48):
just, there's just like too manybetween your, your Biome and
your genome and all the blood work and everything.
And this idea of actually personalized medicine, because
what medicine is now, even if you get into the longevity
stuff, the other stuff is just sick care.
So assuming you want to live longer, this is based on
(48:11):
probability data distribution. And you see data is generally
comes out in a bell curve. And so they're going to say, OK,
for most people, this is the deal.
I can tell you if you take ten of these things, one of us is
going to be way out on the tail of something.
So it's these, these, this sort of science is really useful as a
(48:31):
starting point on the other hand.
I hear the engineer coming out. The engineer.
It's it's basically useless because the only number you want
to know is you. The north of one that is you.
That's all that matters. And the way all these bits fit
together with you at the moment is humanly impossible to
(48:53):
understand. So it falls back into this sort
of probability of like, well, wethink maybe why don't we try
this, then we'll test you in another few days.
If you, if you want like a $500 billion idea, figure that out
how to put all that together andthen intersect with the
healthcare system and get insure.
If you figure out insurance codes on that.
(49:13):
Oh, my God, you got a gold mine.Yeah, that is.
That is Maha. That's the Make America Healthy
Again. That would be a very great
initiative. Do you wear or ring or like a
wearable or anything like that? And what do you think about the
wearables? And then I have one last
question. Wearables.
Are great unless you are an obsessive, if you have an if you
(49:34):
have an obsessive personality, somebody who is going to worry
about what their or their whoop or anything is good going to get
you on their sleep score. Get rid of it.
That's not for you if you're notthat person.
These things, this is information.
So my sleep efficiency is, it's insanely high.
It's like in the 9597%. But it took me a long time to
(49:58):
figure that out because I wear at night, I wear something
called a whoop, which is similarto an aura.
And so I know these are the things I, because you see this
cause and effect, right? I did this, therefore this
happened. Oh, do more of this or less than
this and you sort of figure thisout.
And I think that tracking is about, as I said, feelings are
(50:20):
not facts. So is my deep sleep more or
less, did I really walk this many steps or do I just think I
did? Did I, you know, where are where
am I really? I think is it's very useful.
Again, for a certain kind of person, it's not a good idea
(50:40):
that is. So true.
No one's ever said that. I've asked that question before.
No one's ever said that. So that makes so much sense
because I know some people lose sleep because we're wearing the,
the aura ring or the whoop or whatever.
Yes, last question. Someone 20 years, 30 years
younger than you comes to you and just says, you know what,
David, I want to tap into your wisdom.
(51:02):
I want you, you've, you've liveda good life.
You've, you know, your, your painful life lessons are the raw
material for your future wisdom.I want to learn from your
lessons. Can I have tea with you next
week and you can tell me what your wisdom bumper sticker is?
That maybe a singular wisdom about anything in your life, any
part of your life that feels like it has your wisdom
(51:25):
fingerprints on it. And is there an origin story
that's helped you to learn that lesson?
I. Would say.
I mean, I think about the William James stuff about
greatness. You go.
Back 100 years there. Yeah, I will tell.
Them the thing that you fear most is your own greatness and
owning that greatness. And this is your greatest
challenge. The vast, vast majority of
(51:45):
people, according to Mr. James, and I believe this, live far
below the limits of their capacity.
And I would tell this person you're doing that so you can do
incredible things. You can have an enormous impact
on the people around you. You can do things that are far,
(52:06):
far beyond your imagination, butyou need to get going.
This sounds. Like David talking to his high
school counselor, It's what you wish your high school counselor
had said to you. This.
Is my motivation. I will tell you my goal in life
is to embrace my greatness and to achieve it like my I'm very
(52:27):
internally motivated Chip. I don't I'm not that concerned
about what people think of me. What I am concerned about is
what I think of me and if I think I am achieving my
greatness, whatever that is, that's great.
The thing I do not want to have,the thing that really motivates
me is at some point I'm going todie.
And I don't want 5 minutes before I die to say to myself,
(52:48):
you know, I, I could have been acontender.
Now fuck that. I am a contender and I'm going
to do that thing. And that's, that's what
motivates me. And I think, I mean, I think
that if a young person came to me, I would say you need to get
moving right now. You need to take actions.
Actions lead to results. It life is all about test and
(53:10):
learn. Go do some shit.
I don't care what it is, becausewhatever it is, you're going to
learn from it. It's good or bad, OK, whatever.
Like it's not going to it's not going to kill you, whatever it
is. So get out there and do that.
Become useful, become the best version of yourself.
I mean, for me, because I'm in, you know, I'm motivated the way
I am, but you can. It's all about being useful out
(53:33):
there in the world and figuring out.
Every. Single one of us has this
greatness that we can tap into to help other people, to improve
the world. But you don't figure that out
sitting in your mom's basement watching video games.
Like get outside. Like get to fucking work.
(53:57):
Like meet new people, take risks, start stuff, and you will
learn things about yourself and about the world and you can move
closer to that greatness that you have that is.
Really good as we get older, I think it's really good.
I mean, that's a bumper sticker and a full that's a full
manifesto, my friend. So yes, as we get older, some of
(54:18):
us get really obsessed with being youthful, but at the end
of the day, it's about being useful.
That's the. Whole that is the name of the
game people. Oh boy, you got me agitated now.
So I, I hear this sort of stuff all the time.
It's like, oh, I'm, I'm thinkingabout following my passion.
It's like, what the fuck? You're going to like make sand
candles in Bali or something. No, get out there and get to
(54:39):
work. Like if you are useful, that
becomes your passion. When people count on you, when
people are saying like, oh, I need, I need you like whoever it
is, you're helping your neighbortake their garbage out, whatever
it is like that's the name of the game.
That's what propels you forward.This whole longevity thing.
It's not about putting numbers on the board.
(55:00):
How long can we live or a biomarkers?
No, no. How long can be useful?
How much more usefulness can be put out there if we're healthy?
I'm going to be quiet now, no. I listen, I like the great
ending the fat lady has sung You're no fat lady, that's for
sure. But that was a great way on a
passionate note to end and and you don't care what other people
(55:21):
think about you. But I love you, my friend.
Thank you for joining us on the midlife chrysalis.
I look forward to seeing you. Glad that your knee is
recovering and I hope to see yousoon.
Me. Too.
Thank you for having me, Chip. So my friend David has just
(55:41):
given me an idea, which is I want to actually interview him
and do another podcast episode about his life with Andy Warhol.
So as a famous photographer in the Andy Warhol universe, I
would love to hear more about that.
But if I were to actually summarize the three lessons I
got from Dave, one one of them comes down to something he
actually struggled with earlier in his life, which is this
(56:03):
autoimmune illness and, and the fact that nobody could explain
it. And ultimately it led to his
chrysalis, his midlife chrysalisaround the idea of exploring his
health, his nutrition, all of the kinds of things that led to
stress in his life, where he lived, etcetera.
And so in many ways, sometimes, you know, for me, I had AI, had
(56:25):
a MDE experience at age 47. It changed my life.
I transformed myself, sold my company.
I've had cancer more recently. It's changed how I'm eating.
It's how I it's changed my perspective on my company in
terms of elevating a bunch of people on the leadership team
and having somebody as ACEO, something I never did when I was
joie de vive, but MEA has ACEO, Derek Gale, who does an amazing
(56:48):
job. So Long story short is sometimes
that health crisis is going to lead to lifestyle changes and
maybe even career changes. And I think that was one of my
key lessons in this episode. Secondly, I, I loved when he was
talking about this gig, he had the multi $1,000,000 gig doing
(57:09):
photography for AT&T and almost everybody who was there for the
AT&T video and photography shoots were young people.
So AT&T was basically trying to sell cell service to, to their
customers, but instead of actually having older people,
often who are the young people are on the cellular plan of the
(57:31):
older person. Almost everybody who they were
actually taking photos of were young people.
And so David was just like the the sort of naive guy saying,
why are we doing this? And what he found from the
advertising industry was they just like photographing young
people, partly because they're better looking at by
conventional standards. And because the whole premises,
(57:54):
if you can catch them early, they'll have brand loyalty the
rest of their life. And David has spent the last,
you know, dozen years really debunking some of those myths,
helping people to see that, you know, there's most of the
disposable income and wealth in in the United States is for
people 50 and older. And lots of young people are
(58:15):
brand loyal for two or three years and then they're no longer
brand loyal. I just love the fact that his
his super age and ageist products, these two companies,
he has really came out of that, you know, aha moment, the
epiphany he had when he was on that, that photo shoot.
And then finally, he, he introduced a term that I'm going
(58:38):
to start speaking more, which isage dysmorphia.
Age dysmorphia, the idea that you actually look in the mirror
at 66 and you see a 46 year old.The fact, I mean, I've known
that for a long time is that we,we underestimate our age.
But to call it age dysmorphia, sometimes we have weight
dysmorphia, bodies dysmorphia, which means we see ourselves as
(59:00):
skinnier or fatter than we are. And it it in essence, we have a
a it's like going to the the funhouse at the carnival and
seeing, Oh, my body looks very different because the mirrors is
misshaping you. So we do that with our age.
We do that with our age all the time when we actually think, you
(59:21):
know, sort of think of ourselvesas younger, as if we don't want
to see advertising for someone our age.
And so in some ways it's not just the advertising industry
that has gotten us into where weare where it, you know, in ads,
you just see young people. It's also our own ageism, our
sense that we are aspirations. We want to look like and be like
(59:41):
that person 20 years younger than us.
So hope you enjoyed it. We'll see you next week.
Thanks. For listening to the Midlife
Chrysalis, this show is producedby Midlife Media.
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