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Here's an intriguing fact.
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In the developed world,
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everywhere, women live an average
of six to eight years longer than men do.
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Six to eight years longer.
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That's, like, a huge gap.
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In 2015, the "Lancet" published an article
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showing that men in rich countries
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are twice as likely to die as women are
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at any age.
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But there is one place in the world
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where men live as long as women.
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It's a remote, mountainous zone,
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a blue zone,
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where super longevity
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is common to both sexes.
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This is the blue zone in Sardinia,
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an Italian island in the Mediterranean,
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between Corsica and Tunisia,
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where there are six times
as many centenarians
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as on the Italian mainland,
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less than 200 miles away.
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There are 10 times as many centenarians
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as there are in North America.
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It's the only place
where men live as long as women.
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But why?
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My curiosity was piqued.
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I decided to research the science
and the habits of the place,
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and I started with the genetic profile.
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I discovered soon enough
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that genes account for just
25 percent of their longevity.
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The other 75 percent is lifestyle.
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So what does it take
to live to 100 or beyond?
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What are they doing right?
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What you're looking at
is an aerial view of Villagrande.
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It's a village at the epicenter
of the blue zone
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where I went to investigate this,
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and as you can see, architectural beauty
is not its main virtue,
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density is:
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tightly spaced houses,
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interwoven alleys and streets.
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It means that the villagers' lives
constantly intersect.
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And as I walked through the village,
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I could feel hundreds
of pairs of eyes watching me
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from behind doorways and curtains,
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from behind shutters.
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Because like all ancient villages,
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Villagrande couldn't have survived
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without this structure,
without its walls, without its cathedral,
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without its village square,
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because defense and social cohesion
defined its design.
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Urban priorities changed as we moved
towards the industrial revolution
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because infectious disease
became the risk of the day.
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But what about now?
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Now, social isolation
is the public health risk of our time.
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Now, a third of the population says
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they have two or fewer people to lean on.
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But let's go to Villagrande
now as a contrast
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to meet some centenarians.
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Meet Giuseppe Murinu.
He's 102, a supercentenarian
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and a lifelong resident
of the village of Villagrande.
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He was a gregarious man.
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He loved to recount stories
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such as how he lived like a bird
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from what he could find
on the forest floor
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during not one but two world wars,
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how he and his wife,
who also lived past 100,
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raised six children
in a small, homey kitchen
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where I interviewed him.
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Here he is with his sons
Angelo and Domenico,
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both in their 70s
and looking after their father,
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and who were quite frankly
very suspicious of me and my daughter
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who came along with me
on this research trip,
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because the flip side of social cohesion
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is a wariness of strangers and outsiders.
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But Giuseppe, he wasn't suspicious at all.
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He was a happy-go-lucky guy,
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very outgoing with a positive outlook.
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And I wondered: so is that what it takes
to live to be 100 or beyond,
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thinking positively?
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Actually, no.
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(Laughter)
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Meet Giovanni Corrias. He's 101,
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the grumpiest person I have ever met.
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(Laughter)
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And he put a lie to the notion
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that you have to be positive
to live a long life.
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And there is evidence for this.
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When I asked him why he lived so long,
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he kind of looked at me
under hooded eyelids and he growled,
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"Nobody has to know my secrets."
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(Laughter)
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But despite being a sourpuss,
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the niece who lived with him
and looked after him
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called him "Il Tesoro," "my treasure."
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And she respected him and loved him,
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and she told me, when I questioned
this obvious loss of her freedom,
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"You just don't understand, do you?
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Looking after this man is a pleasure.
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It's a huge privilege for me.
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This is my heritage."
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And indeed, wherever I went
to interview these centenarians,
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I found a kitchen party.
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Here's Giovanni with his two nieces,
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Maria above him
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and beside him his great-niece Sara,
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who came when I was there
to bring fresh fruits and vegetables.
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And I quickly discovered by being there
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that in the blue zone, as people age,
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and indeed across their lifespans,
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they're always surrounded
by extended family, by friends,
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by neighbors, the priest,
the barkeeper, the grocer.
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People are always there or dropping by.
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They are never left
to live solitary lives.
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This is unlike the rest
of the developed world,
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where as George Burns quipped,
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"Happiness is having a large,
loving, caring family in another city."
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(Laughter)
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Now, so far we've only met men,
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long-living men, but I met women too,
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and here you see Zia Teresa.
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She, at over 100, taught me
how to make the local specialty,
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which is called culurgiones,
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which are these large pasta pockets
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like ravioli about this size,
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this size,
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and they're filled
with high-fat ricotta and mint
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and drenched in tomato sauce.
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And she showed me
how to make just the right crimp
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so they wouldn't open,
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and she makes them
with her daughters every Sunday
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and distributes them
by the dozens to neighbors and friends.
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And that's when I discovered
a low-fat, gluten-free diet
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is not what it takes
to live to 100 in the blue zone.
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(Applause)
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Now, these centenarians' stories
along with the science that underpins them
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prompted me to ask myself
some questions too,
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such as, when am I going to die
and how can I put that day off?
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And as you will see,
the answer is not what we expect.
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Julianne Holt-Lunstad is a researcher
at Brigham Young University
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and she addressed this very question
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in a series of studies
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of tens of thousands of middle aged people
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much like this audience here.
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And she looked at every
aspect of their lifestyle:
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their diet, their exercise,
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their marital status,
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how often they went to the doctor,
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whether they smoked or drank, etc.
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She recorded all of this
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and then she and her colleagues
sat tight and waited for seven years
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to see who would still be breathing.
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And of the people left standing,
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what reduced their chances
of dying the most?
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That was her question.
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So let's now look at her data in summary,
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going from the least powerful
predictor to the strongest.
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OK?
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So clean air, which is great,
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it doesn't predict how long you will live.
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Whether you have your hypertension treated
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is good.
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Still not a strong predictor.
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Whether you're lean or overweight,
you can stop feeling guilty about this,
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because it's only in third place.
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How much exercise you get is next,
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still only a moderate predictor.
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Whether you've had a cardiac event
and you're in rehab and exercising,
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getting higher now.
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Whether you've had a flu vaccine.
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Did anybody here know
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that having a flu vaccine
protects you more than doing exercise?
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Whether you were drinking and quit,
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or whether you're a moderate drinker,
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whether you don't smoke,
or if you did, whether you quit,
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and getting towards the top predictors
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are two features of your social life.
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First, your close relationships.
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These are the people
that you can call on for a loan
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if you need money suddenly,
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who will call the doctor
if you're not feeling well
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or who will take you to the hospital,
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or who will sit with you
if you're having an existential crisis,
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if you're in despair.
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Those people, that little clutch of people
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are a strong predictor, if you have them,
of how long you'll live.
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And then something that surprised me,
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something that's called
social integration.
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This means how much
you interact with people
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as you move through your day.
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How many people do you talk to?
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And these mean both
your weak and your strong bonds,
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so not just the people
you're really close to,
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who mean a lot to you,
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but, like, do you talk to the guy
who every day makes you your coffee?
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Do you talk to the postman?
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Do you talk to the woman who walks
by your house every day with her dog?
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Do you play bridge or poker,
have a book club?
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Those interactions
are one of the strongest predictors
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of how long you'll live.
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Now, this leads me to the next question:
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if we now spend more time online
than on any other activity,
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including sleeping,
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we're now up to 11 hours a day,
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one hour more than last year, by the way,
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does it make a difference?
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Why distinguish
between interacting in person
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and interacting via social media?
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Is it the same thing as being there
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if you're in contact constantly
with your kids through text, for example?
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Well, the short answer
to the question is no,
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it's not the same thing.
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Face-to-face contact releases
a whole cascade of neurotransmitters,
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and like a vaccine,
they protect you now in the present
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and well into the future.
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So simply making
eye contact with somebody,
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shaking hands, giving somebody a high-five
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is enough to release oxytocin,
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which increases your level of trust
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and it lowers your cortisol levels.
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So it lowers your stress.
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And dopamine is generated,
which gives us a little high
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and it kills pain.
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It's like a naturally produced morphine.
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Now, all of this passes
under our conscious radar,
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which is why we conflate
online activity with the real thing.
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But we do have evidence now,
fresh evidence,
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that there is a difference.
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So let's look at some of the neuroscience.
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Elizabeth Redcay, a neuroscientist
at the University of Maryland,
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tried to map the difference
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between what goes on in our brains
when we interact in person
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versus when we're watching
something that's static.
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And what she did was
she compared the brain function
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of two groups of people,
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those interacting live with her
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or with one of her research associates
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in a dynamic conversation,
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and she compared that
to the brain activity of people
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who were watching her talk
about the same subject
00:11:18
but in a canned video, like on YouTube.
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And by the way, if you want to know
00:11:23
how she fit two people
in an MRI scanner at the same time,
00:11:26
talk to me later.
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So what's the difference?
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This is your brain
on real social interaction.
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What you're seeing
is the difference in brain activity
00:11:37
between interacting in person
and taking in static content.
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In orange, you see the brain areas
that are associated with attention,
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social intelligence --
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that means anticipating
what somebody else is thinking
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and feeling and planning --
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and emotional reward.
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And these areas become much more engaged
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when we're interacting
with a live partner.
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Now, these richer brain signatures
00:12:04
might be why recruiters
from Fortune 500 companies
00:12:08
evaluating candidates
00:12:10
thought that the candidates were smarter
00:12:13
when they heard their voices
00:12:15
compared to when they just
read their pitches in a text, for example,
00:12:19
or an email or a letter.
00:12:20
Now, our voices and body language
convey a rich signal.
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It shows that we're thinking, feeling,
00:12:25
sentient human beings
00:12:27
who are much more than an algorithm.
00:12:29
Now, this research by Nicholas Epley
00:12:31
at the University of Chicago
Business School
00:12:36
is quite amazing because
it tells us a simple thing.
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If somebody hears your voice,
00:12:41
they think you're smarter.
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I mean, that's quite a simple thing.
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Now, to return to the beginning,
00:12:49
why do women live longer than men?
00:12:51
And one major reason
is that women are more likely
00:12:54
to prioritize and groom
their face-to-face relationships
00:12:57
over their lifespans.
00:12:59
Fresh evidence shows
00:13:00
that these in-person friendships
00:13:02
create a biological force field
against disease and decline.
00:13:06
And it's not just true of humans
00:13:08
but their primate relations,
our primate relations as well.
00:13:12
Anthropologist Joan Silk's work
shows that female baboons
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who have a core of female friends
00:13:18
show lower levels of stress
via their cortisol levels,
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they live longer and they have
more surviving offspring.
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At least three stable relationships.
00:13:28
That was the magic number.
00:13:30
Think about it.
00:13:31
I hope you guys have three.
00:13:34
The power of such face-to-face contact
00:13:38
is really why there are
the lowest rates of dementia
00:13:41
among people who are socially engaged.
00:13:43
It's why women who have breast cancer
00:13:45
are four times more likely
to survive their disease than loners are.
00:13:51
Why men who've had a stroke
who meet regularly to play poker
00:13:55
or to have coffee
00:13:56
or to play old-timer's hockey --
00:13:59
I'm Canadian, after all --
00:14:00
(Laughter)
00:14:01
are better protected
by that social contact
00:14:04
than they are by medication.
00:14:06
Why men who've had a stroke
who meet regularly --
00:14:09
this is something very
powerful they can do.
00:14:11
This face-to-face contact
provides stunning benefits,
00:14:15
yet now almost a quarter of the population
says they have no one to talk to.
00:14:20
We can do something about this.
00:14:23
Like Sardinian villagers,
00:14:25
it's a biological imperative
to know we belong,
00:14:28
and not just the women among us.
00:14:30
Building in-person interaction
into our cities, into our workplaces,
00:14:35
into our agendas
00:14:37
bolsters the immune system,
00:14:39
sends feel-good hormones
surging through the bloodstream and brain
00:14:43
and helps us live longer.
00:14:45
I call this building your village,
00:14:48
and building it and sustaining it
is a matter of life and death.
00:14:52
Thank you.
00:14:53
(Applause)
00:14:59
Helen Walters: Susan, come back.
I have a question for you.
00:15:02
I'm wondering if there's a middle path.
00:15:04
So you talk about the neurotransmitters
connecting when in face-to-face,
00:15:08
but what about digital technology?
00:15:09
We've seen enormous improvements
in digital technology
00:15:12
like FaceTime, things like that.
00:15:14
Does that work too?
00:15:16
I mean, I see my nephew.
00:15:17
He plays Minecraft
and he's yelling at his friends.
00:15:19
It seems like he's connecting pretty well.
00:15:21
Is that useful? Is that helpful?
00:15:23
Susan Pinker: Some of the data
are just emerging.
00:15:26
The data are so fresh
that the digital revolution happened
00:15:29
and the health data trailed behind.
00:15:31
So we're just learning,
00:15:33
but I would say
there are some improvements
00:15:35
that we could make in the technology.
00:15:37
For example, the camera on your laptop
is at the top of the screen,
00:15:40
so for example, when you're
looking into the screen,
00:15:43
you're not actually making eye contact.
00:15:45
So something as simple
as even just looking into the camera
00:15:48
can increase those neurotransmitters,
00:15:51
or maybe changing
the position of the camera.
00:15:53
So it's not identical, but I think
we are getting closer with the technology.
00:15:57
HW: Great. Thank you so much.
00:15:59
SP: Thank you.
00:16:00
(Applause)
