Blue Zones Debunked: The Longevity Con That's Fooled Millions

Everybody wants to live longer, and for two decades the Blue Zones, places with the highest percentage of people 100+ years old, have promised to show us how with nine tidy behaviors we can all copy. According to Saul Newman, a demographer at the University of Oxford, almost none of it holds up. M…

Art Is the Missing Pillar of Your Health

Art is not a luxury. According to Daisy Fancourt, one of the world's foremost researchers on arts and health, it is a missing pillar of health, right next to sleep, diet, and exercise. People who regularly engage with the arts have about half the risk of developing depression over the next ten year…

Muscle, Not Weight, Predicts How Long You'll Live | How Medicine Gets Weight Loss Wrong with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon

Most of us assume America's biggest health problem is obesity. Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, a physician for 20 years and the founder of Muscle-Centric Medicine, argues we have spent 50 years fighting the wrong problem. We are not over fat, we are under-muscled, and obesity is a symptom of unhealthy skeletal…

Kidnapped in Colombia, Dinner with the Taliban: What the World’s Most Dangerous Places Actually Teach Us

Robert Young Pelton spent his early career as an advertising executive with 50 employees, a Rolls Royce, and a half acre on the ocean. At 40, he walked away from it to become a journalist and report from the world's most dangerous places. In the 30 years since, a Liberian rebel has put a bullet two…

He Survived an Earthquake and Avalanche on Everest - Then Went Back Up

Most people will never even think about climbing Mount Everest. Dr. Jon Kedrowski has been on seven Everest expeditions and reached the summit four times. Along the way he survived the 2015 earthquake that killed 20 people in front of him at base camp, a storm that killed seven climbers on the nigh…

The Best Hand Loses 88% of the Time: What Poker Reveals About All Our Decisions

Maria Konnikova earned a PhD in psychology at Columbia studying human decision-making. She then took her research into the most unforgiving laboratory there is: the poker table. From playing her first hand of poker in 2017, to training under the legendary Erik Seidel, and becoming a poker champion,…

The Self-Improvement Books That Will Actually Change Your Life | Ditch the Overrated Reads

Summer is peak reading season, so Michael sits down with Alex Wieckowski of Alex & Books, who has read two books a week for the past decade. Together they build a list of some of their favorite books, including one hidden gem from Tolstoy, “A Calendar of Wisdom.” Alex tells the true survival story …

These Sports Protect Your Brain Against Dementia

It turns out that tennis might be one of the best things you can do to protect your brain from dementia as you age. For this episode of Two Percent, Michael Easter sits down with neuroscientist Dr. Tommy Wood, author of The Stimulated Mind, to explain why sports that make you think while you move a…

How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game and Finally Feel Happy

Ever feel like you're winning at life on paper, hitting your steps, your salary goals, your sleep score, and somehow still feel worse? This episode explains why. Host Michael Easter sits down with the thinker who's lived rent-free in his head for five years: C. Thi Nguyen, a philosophy professor a…

Why Our Brains Lie About How Bad Things Are - And How to Stop It

If you turn on the news right now, you'll be hit with a sea of negativity, and it can convince you the world is falling apart. It isn't. Host Michael Easter sits down with two guests to explain why our minds are literally built to outweigh the bad, and how you can bias yourself back toward the posi…