Transcript
Dean Wehrli:
Welcome to the New Home Insights, the John Burns Real Estate Consulting podcast about all things housing. I’m your host Dean Wehrli. I sometimes say at the lead in to these episodes that we’re going to do something a little different today. Today we really are going to do something quite a bit different than what we usually have here on the podcast. We’re going to talk about aging. Or really we’re going to talk about not aging, right? Or aging more slowly and living a lot longer.
So we’ll get to the housing impact, I promise, toward the end there, but mostly we’re going to talk about aging. We’re going to do that with Dr. Michael F. Roizen. Dr. Roizen, I’m going to call him Mike, by the way. He’s a very nice guy. He has a book out called The Great Age Reboot. His co-authors, Peter Linneman, an economist, and Peter Ratner, a demographer, are all hugely qualified. Dr. Roizen, I’ll let you introduce yourself in just a second. But you’re with the Cleveland Clinic, which if you don’t know, it is one of the most prestigious medical institutions in the world. And he’s written four New York Times bestsellers. The book is also published by National Geographic. Mike, how are you doing this morning?
Dr. Michael Roizen:
I’m doing great. It’s actually nine New York Times bestsellers, but four number ones.
Dean Wehrli:
Oh, okay. I read the four. Four ones, four ones and nine total. It’s like golds and bronzes. Okay.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
So, I’m proud of that, but the only reason to write a book is because something is changed in my world in science that changes a lot. So, when we started writing, we said in 1998, 60 could be the new 40. It is. 90 is with an 80% probability likely to be the new 40 within the next 10 years. Drop back a little bit. So, I am the Chief Wellness Officer emeritus at the Cleveland Clinic, a professor at the Cleveland Clinic Learner College of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University, and I’m a science nerd, if you will. So, not a housing nerd, but-
Dean Wehrli:
You do. You do have some comments on housing. They’re pretty interesting. We’ll get to that. But first let’s get to, let’s start with the basic premise then. The overarching, just like your… I’ll start with this. I’m not going to lie. When I first saw the idea of the premise, again the elevator pitch, as they say sometimes, I’m not going to… I was a little worried that it could dip into the world of pseudoscience pretty easily because you have some pretty dramatic arguments here. I read the book though, I read your qualifications, and I do have some questions, I’m not going to lie, but I also was pretty persuaded by it, as well. So let’s start with that, if you can. Just your elevator pitch of what you say.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
Well, over the last 170 years, life expectancy has increased about two and a half years, every 10 years. So, we’ve gone from life expectancy of 41 to 78 in the developed world. Initially because of progress in childhood, in sanitation, in childhood diseases, in vaccines; and then more recently in the management of chronic disease of adults, blood pressure elevation, type two diabetes, heart disease, et cetera. We’re now going to get… We have had an exponential increase in the research into the basic mechanisms of aging. And in 14 of these areas and at least two species, we’ve been able to reboot, we meaning science, has been able to reboot the animals back in time. So this is not slowing aging, this is rebooting to a younger age. And because of that, and that’s happened in 14 areas, it’s now moving into human trials.
You’re seeing some of that with the gene editing trials in Australia where they did heart failure and extended the life of people with very low ejection fractions. That’s the amount of blood excreted from 12% and they’ve knocked out a protein, knocked out a gene that makes a protein that causes heart failure. So these people who had literally less than six months to live, now have 18 years to live, and it will be productive life. Their ejection fraction’s at 35%.
We’ve seen it in a knocking out the gene that causes increased cholesterol in a trial in New Zealand. We’ve seen it in, if you will, a small group of humans who have been… Their epigenes, their genes that control the switches on their genes… All genes do is make proteins, which genes are on or not are under your control through your epigenes 80% of the time. And we’ve seen it now rebooting those epigenes toward their eight day old factory settings. So we’re now seeing this in all of the 14 areas. Progress. If with 14 shots on goal, there’s at least an 80% chance this happens to humans, we’ll see it in the next 10 years, which means people will be able to be living and be productive 30 years longer at least.
Dean Wehrli:
Let’s tease that out. If we can, let’s start with the medical parts of this and then I thought we would talk a little bit about the aging specifically and kind of the demographic parts of your argument, and then I thought we’d at least touch on the economic parts before we talk about the housing because there really are those facets of your overall thesis. I guess on the medical, I guess healthcare part of this, the basic premise, tell me if I’m wrong, is that we’re going to do this through things like 3D printing of organs. So you have brand new organs. Things like reprogramming our cells and I guess rewriting our DNA. Do I have that more or less right in terms of the medical reasons for this argument?
Dr. Michael Roizen:
There are 14 different areas of research into aging mechanisms. So some such as stem cells without immunogenicity, so you can make stem cells in huge quantities and have them repair, for example, a heart attack, or repair a brain. There’s, if you will, autophagy, which is how do we get rid of our old cells and recycle them? There are senolytics, just getting rid of old cells that make their neighboring cells. We don’t know which of these mechanisms is going to break through. And it may be, as you said, it may be more than one of them, and we may use bionic parts for livers and kidneys, et cetera; or if you will, bone, et cetera. And we may use, if you will, epigenetic reprogramming for brain and heart. But whatever it is, there is a huge amount of money starting in 1993 that has gone into aging mechanism research and that has shown that you can reboot this in animal models.
Dean Wehrli:
Let’s take body parts for a second if you can. So, I think part of the argument is that if we’re living longer, we’re going to want to live younger. And one of those things is body part replacements. My knees already feel like they’re 90 plus at least. Are we really on the cusp of having this revolution in body parts and 3D organ printing? Is that really near term, that science?
Dr. Michael Roizen:
The other thing for the cartilage… In other words the reason that a knee feels like it does, is the cartilage wears out, and there are both experiments on replacing that cartilage and learning how to regrow it. There are some sizable hints in animal studies that it is actually old cells that cause the problem, and that harvesting the old cells will allow new cells to regrow and to be a functional knee without… In other words, assuming that this is wear and tear osteoarthritis, that you’ll get a new knee without a problem from the old knee.
Dean Wehrli:
I want that because mine was basketball on concrete. In hindsight, a very poor choice, but I’m looking… That’s the most important thing to me, if I’m being super selfish.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
No, no, no.
Dean Wehrli:
Although we do… Go ahead.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
But it is not… I mean, you’re not unique if you will. 30 million Americans suffer from serious osteoporosis. We’ve gone from literally 7,000 knee replacements in 1974 to now between knee and hip, it’s over one and a half million, and it’s projected to be seven million by 2050. So we have some parts already that are pretty good. They aren’t perfect. We’re getting to the point where we’re going to have pretty darn perfect replacements if the animal models hold up into humans. There’s always a jump from animal models to humans. But as I said, with 14 shots on goal, it looks like you’re going to be able to do this. And as I said, the trials are beginning now in humans and they’re having some remarkable successes.
Dean Wehrli:
I want night vision telescopic eyes right now. You mentioned that in the book and I’m eager for that. How about 3D organ printing? I found that really interesting. The downside of that though, it will ruin horror movies that rely on cloning and harvesting the organs from our clones. For that reason I’m rooting against 3D organ printing. But are we really pretty close to literal 3D organ printing?
Dr. Michael Roizen:
Well, look at the toughest organs to print. They are the liver. Why? Because it has three different functions. It secrets, it excretes, and it metabolizes. So, that has the Team Winston, from Winston Salem University, Team Winston won the prize for being able to 3D print a human liver last year. So, small size, but that’s how progress is made. Kidney, heart and brain obviously, and spinal cord and nerves of the spinal cord, are the toughest. But we’re getting… When you get to the fourth toughest organ or the third toughest, the liver, you’re getting so that we’re going to be able to 3D print a lot. And so, what do you say? So when you’re somehow in your adult age at 40, we will take a print of you if you will, and be able to 3D print every organ as it were when you were 40 again. So, that’s the hope of this research. And they say they’re no more than five to seven years away from doing a heart, which is obviously the, either how you count it, the second or third toughest organ to do.
Dean Wehrli:
And a critical one too. Heart and brain, right? I mean if they can do that, yeah, that’s interesting. I would’ve not have thought that the timeline… Some of these things albeit, as reading your book, one of the toughest questions I had was timelines for a lot of things. But if 3D printing is not so far off, then who can say? There was this kind of dystopian movie with Matt Damon and Jody Foster called Elysium. I don’t know, maybe 10 years ago. It didn’t do well but it’s an interesting premise.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
If we don’t get longevity, that’s immediately going to happen. Meaning, Medicare and social security trust funds. If we don’t get longevity, we’ll run out by the CBO’s estimate sometime in the early 2030s. The great news on this is, if you’re going to live 30 years longer, you’re going to work 20 years longer. That increases human capital by 50%, meaning we’ll pay into social security and Medicare if the policy makers do it right gradually at an increasing age, and we will save that system and save the system. In addition, and as we argued in the book, if we can reduce the costs in the last three years… In the last year we spend about, I think it is 16%, and in the last three years, another 8% on chronic care. If you delay those as we expect to do by at least five years, meaning instead of having it be 16% and 8%, it will be 1.5%, the usual rate that we spend at 1.75%, we save over a trillion dollars to be able to invest in this.
Dean Wehrli:
Let me stop you right there. I don’t know that it really answers the question. So, focusing right now, in terms of how we order our economy, would everyone have access… If we have this medical care right now to do what you’re talking about, would everyone have access to that? I think the answer is almost certainly no. So how do we… Growing the economy, having people work longer for 30 years in jobs that don’t pay for that kind of medical access isn’t going to help them.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
We now have a system that if… Let me go and do two tax on your question, because there really are two approaches. One is, the Cleveland Clinic through incentive based system is saving 38% of its medical care costs on our employees compared to both our trendline and others by just helping people voluntarily get healthy. So we’re saving 38% even after paying a large incentive; $1,500 per [inaudible]. That process, if we can get that done in a big way, one… So there are two big questions, can we motivate people to do that? And secondly, if we delay aging, if you will, we have a huge saving since most chronic disease is related to the age of the individual. Your knees for example, didn’t occur when you were 35.
Dean Wehrli:
It was starting.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
But in any case, the point is that at this time, let’s just say that the AMBAR dementia therapy is the one that we try in everyone. Well, it is cheap enough to do on everyone and to not have an increased cost in medicine. So, if we did it right now without longevity, you’re right, we would have at least a two tier system; at best, a two tier system medical care I guess you would say. But if we get longevity, you don’t have to have it. In fact, when Peter Linneman, who’s an economist from the Wharton School, he looked at the data pretty carefully, and he said we’d have to actually reduce tax rates to have a balanced budget at the current rate of spending.
Dean Wehrli:
That sounds like optimism, honestly. I mean-
Dr. Michael Roizen:
Well no-
Dean Wehrli:
I think-
Dr. Michael Roizen:
It obviously says at the current rate of spending.
Dean Wehrli:
Yeah, okay. Yeah. Well, I mean, I will say this. Let’s move on to aging, but I will just say that I don’t think we can’t afford to do this.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
Winston Churchill said it right, right? That America will do the right thing after it has tried all the wrong things.
Dean Wehrli:
Oh, you know what? Then we’re trying really hard. So let’s talk about aging a little bit. I want to tease that out a little bit. The demographic, the aging part of your thesis. Tell me, so you pause at the average age of Americans will be shifting upward for now on, right? And so, by 2030, which is now, I think when you wrote it was about a decade away, we will have an average age of 108 versus I think 81 right now. Is that right? Is that kind of the expected age?
Dr. Michael Roizen:
You mean the life expectancy.
Dean Wehrli:
I’m sorry. Yes. Yeah.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
Yes, that’s correct.
Dean Wehrli:
Okay. Got it.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
Life expectancy at birth, that is.
Dean Wehrli:
Got it. Okay.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
So there are various kinds of life expectancy, but the life expectancy at birth, we would expect to be 108 by about 2030.
Dean Wehrli:
That’s what I thought. I wanted to make sure I had that right. And you mentioned a minute ago actually at the top, that the 90 will be the new 40 because we will feel younger longer. Does that mean 60 will be the new 10 and isn’t that kind of creepy in certain situations?
Dr. Michael Roizen:
No, 60 won’t be the new 10, but 60 will be the new… It will be the new 38 or something. I mean, essentially, the period between age 30 and 60 will be extended to between 30 and 90.
Dean Wehrli:
So because of things like our new knees and maybe our new organs, things like that, we will be able to just… Not just live longer but live younger and feel younger well past what would currently now be retirement age. Do I have that correct?
Dr. Michael Roizen:
That’s what is happening in the animal models.
Dean Wehrli:
Okay.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
I want to be very careful. This is at least within 80% probability, but it isn’t 100%, but it is 14 different areas. We go through them in the book that actually have shown in at least two different animal species. So let me give you reducing obesity as an example, since it’s really done. So we have white fat and we have brown fat. White fat is inflammatory. It’s what we see hanging off our bellies, et cetera. Brown fat is what we had when we were newborns, which was around our clavicles, around our upper body and around our organs to keep us warm when our mom wasn’t swaddling us.
Dean Wehrli:
Okay.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
So take that white fat, regress it, it came from the same poor potent fat, and turn it into brown fat and you eliminate obesity. Guess what? That’s been done in now three different animals. The biggest is lamb. Why do you say they did it in lamb? I have no idea other than what I’ve learned is that non-alcoholic fatty liver disease from eating too much is a problem in lambs and limits their life and limits the ability to get wool from them. So, that’s why-
Dean Wehrli:
So we have obese sheep? And that’s sort of more analogous to humans than other animals?
Dr. Michael Roizen:
Apparently. Yes.
Dean Wehrli:
Huh. Okay.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
Anyway, but this is actually being now starting experiments in Japan. Now Japan doesn’t have as many obese people percentage wise as America, but it’s easier to do the experiments apparently there.
Dean Wehrli:
Okay. Okay. And otherwise though, the idea that… I guess we’ve already kind of touched on this, but the idea that we live a lot longer, it means we’re going to have to retire later, doesn’t it? This doesn’t make an economic sense if we still retire at 65.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
Well, if you’re going to live to 115, you’re not going to want to do nothing for 50 years, or hang out the hammock-
Dean Wehrli:
Some people will.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
I mean, you’re going to want… So we’re going to need a new education system. The real reason we wrote the book was to get people to think about how this is going to be different and to plan for it. So, obviously education will have to change. People don’t love going back to school, but there will have to be another training system to be able for you to train for second and third careers.
Dean Wehrli:
Yeah, I read that in the book. That was really interesting I thought because that makes absolute perfect sense. I just wonder if folks in their 60s are motivated to learn whatever is newest and shiny as then at the time. It’s not natural, but we’re going to have to change some of the ways we live. One of those, besides working… Go ahead.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
Just think back to 1900 when people lived to 41 or 42.
Dean Wehrli:
Yeah.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
It wasn’t natural to think about working to 65 either. So, we evolved this. We changed this as we learned different things and the difference is this is the biggest… Longevity is the greatest disruptor, the next disruptor. The last one was the chip, as we say in the book. Micro not potato, about 60 years ago, and it enhanced the way we live. This one actually gives us life.
Dean Wehrli:
Yeah, our attitudes… That’s a great point. Our attitudes do change about aging and what is perceived as quote-unquote old. You mentioned in the book that a long time ago what age was thought of as old was very much younger. That’s not true anymore. We’ve kind of increased that age as time has gone on. You read old books and they honestly talk about people in their 60s, like they’re absolutely at death’s door and they just are feeble and unable to exist. So, our attitudes are changing. Again, it’s speed of these changes and the willingness to change with them, because you say that people have to take better care of themselves. If you’re going to live that long, you can’t completely rely… It’s diet, things like that. So the counter to that is will we? Because have we? What’s going to change in our attitudes?
Dr. Michael Roizen:
And the answer is, one of the points we make in the book is that each of us is a genetic engineer for ourselves. So, all genes do is they’re protein factories. So for example, when you exercise and stress a muscle, you turn on a gene that makes the protein Irisin. Irisin gets across the blood-brain barrier and turns on brain-derived neurotrophic factor, grows your hippocampus. It’s like miracle growth for your brain. Grows your hippocampus, which means much less chance of dementia.
So why does exercise help you, if you will, prevent dementia, prevent cognitive decline? It’s because you turn on a gene. You are genetic engineer for yourself. That attitude has to get across, and yes, there is an emotional change we have to make about being responsible for ourselves because we aren’t going to… Once you get end organ damage of a high enough degree, we don’t think you’re going to go in a car wash at one end and come out a 40 year old at the other end. That may occur by 2080 or something, but in the next 10 years or next 20 or 30 years, we think that it’s likely to be one organ change at a time.
Dean Wehrli:
Okay. But you’re still going to ask relatively younger people to take better care of themselves for a very long time. Again, don’t get me wrong, I hope that happens. I want that to happen. I just don’t know if that’s the American psyche that it will happen. We’ll see, We’ll see. But I hope so. Same with savings by the way too. Right? To make this work economically, folks are going to have to save a lot more, a lot younger. Same idea. We haven’t historically done that. I know our savings have gone way up during COVID, but that’s I think an artificial impact. Same thing, I hope we do, but will we?
Dr. Michael Roizen:
Well, we point out that Australia, Denmark and Singapore have four savings. If you save 3% of a $15 per hour income from the time you start to age 65, assuming that’s 40 years, you will have about $257,000. If you did it and left it in that same growing at 4% per year to age 95, you’d have 1.4 million in today’s dollars. If you work for an employer who matches it, it’s 2.8 million. And believe it or not, while we were writing this, this past year, the House of Representatives, it’s now at the Senate, passed this almost unanimously bipartisan for savings into this account. It’s now at the Senate. I couldn’t believe it because I’d never heard anything about it.
Dean Wehrli:
I honestly missed that. I didn’t know that. There’s a forced savings… Really?
Dr. Michael Roizen:
Yeah. So, it’s in front of the Senate. I haven’t seen it brought up, but I’ve heard in talking to one of the Ohio senators, said it’s still very much alive in committee and is likely to get voted on.
Dean Wehrli:
You never hear it in the public discourse. My worry would be that the first politician who really trumpets that in a very public way probably loses their next election. I think that’d be a political mine field in America. The attitudes, left and right, I think there’d be a… I don’t know, again, hopefully, but skeptical about the opposition to that if it became a real… It became in the public mood and on the media. I don’t know.
Dean Wehrli:
I would worry that some of this, you might get into… You know how vaccines used to be a very non controversial item? Now they’re extraordinarily controversial. Could you see attitudes changing about aging? In other words, people questioning, should we do this? Should we do so much effort and spend so much money to have people live longer? I mean, are you fearful that that kind of attitude might arise?
Dr. Michael Roizen:
It depends how we present it, and that’s one of the reasons again we wrote the book, was that longevity really becomes the cure for our economic malaise.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
If you look at the world, I mean, even… I don’t know when this podcast will appear, but in late August, George Will had a Sunday op-ed in the Washington Post on the fact that the changing demographics of China, its decline in population due to the birth rate problem they have, which is worldwide issue, it’s not just China, will cause them to become… How do I call, more avaricious, meaning more likely to attack other countries, more likely to be warlike. And the point is, longevity is the solution for that. If everyone in China lived 30 years longer and was productive for 30 or say 20 years longer, that solves their demographic problem, just like it solves ours.
Meaning, you don’t have as high… The problem they brought up was the dependency ratio, when China, at one point… The United States, when we started social security, there were like 46 people working age to support one over 65. Then it went to 25 when Medicare was passed. Now it’s 4.7 and it’s going to go down. China’s the same way. And the problem is that… But the solution is, if you don’t retire till 85, which is what longevity is going to allow you to do, if you’re going to live to 115, then the point is, we get rid of that problem and that warlike mentality of this is the last time we can take over the world that George Will predicted for China.
Dean Wehrli:
Okay. Let’s talk about housing, because I promised our listeners at the top that we would. One of the big picture conclusions you have specific to housing is that we’ll need upwards of about two million housing units annually to accommodate this larger growing population from people dying less and living longer. We can’t build that now. We’re unable to. I mean, does this have the potential to exacerbate the housing shortage in the country?
Dr. Michael Roizen:
Peter Linneman says it best. He says, “When there’s enough money, we find a way to solve our problems.” And we think there will be enough money in this. In other words, if you’re not going to move out of your house, if you’re not moving into assisted living for say even seven extra years, but say 20 extra years, you’re going to need a much bigger housing stock than we now have.
Dean Wehrli:
Yeah.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
And will it be small? In other words, you can think through this and say, “Well, one of the things is we’re going to have multi houses with shared living room, shared dining room, shared common space, but private bedrooms and bathrooms.” This will change much like, if you will, college and graduates students now do. And so, there are many choices, and we don’t know which one will come up. One of the interesting things is, I mean, if you will, that’s one of the predictions of what will happen. The way we build, the way we… How do I, say, the architecture of the homes for people over the age of 65 who take second and third jobs will change a great deal. And so, we think housing and real estate will be one of the biggest changes that you’ll see in this.
Dean Wehrli:
What you just mentioned though is effectively it sounds a lot like co-living where you have these common areas. That kind of had its day a couple years ago and sort of faded because it didn’t have a lot of demand. So again, the worry is that, that sounds like a rational solution, but will it be a market acceptable solution, is I think open to question? We’ll see.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
I think the big question is, how will you accommodate an older but functionally younger population, with in fact perhaps five generations living together in many family units. I mean, we don’t expect divorce to stop all of a sudden. So, you’re going to have a bigger tribe that is multi-generational.
Dean Wehrli:
So more multi-generational. That’s already been a major trend for years now in housing. So you see more of this multi-generational living. That’ll take a little bit of a cultural change, won’t it though, for a lot of Americans?
Dr. Michael Roizen:
Oh, longevity as a disruptor will be a huge emotional and cultural change. And that’s really, as you’re exploring, is really the key point to look at. The second key point is to be prepared for it both financially and medically, or health wise.
Dean Wehrli:
How about in terms of housing and product, what would you say? So the type of house people live in, do you see more… I think you see fewer bedrooms, but more amenities within the home, and more common spaces within a home? Is that one of the trends you see as happening?
Dr. Michael Roizen:
Well, it’s one of the trends that when I have two housing experts as co-authors, Albert Ratner, who is the CEO and chair of Four City for 25 years, I think. And Peter Linneman, who clearly is one of the experts in the economics of housing, they did the predictions on that in the book.
Dean Wehrli:
Okay, okay.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
Yeah. So I can’t own their expertise, but they see a lot of potential changes going forward and that’s why they’re in the book, obviously.
Dean Wehrli:
And I think also, I’ll just touch on one more then. I think they talk about, you guys talk about housing density. So, do you folks see how overall housing density, more smaller homes, more attached, just greater housing density as an answer?
Dr. Michael Roizen:
Yes. So they do see that. And obviously, if you’ve got multi-generational families, you’re going to have multi-generational families living close or attached to one another. So, that is a thought of what will happen.
Dean Wehrli:
Yeah. You mentioned assisted living a minute ago. Won’t this revolution in our brains and this DNA editing, that could decrease the need for assisted living and dementia care, couldn’t it?
Dr. Michael Roizen:
We hope it will, in the short term. Now, the transitions are always problematic. So, in the intermediate term it may increase it, but in the short and long term as a percentage, it should decrease it.
Dean Wehrli:
Oh, I see.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
If you will, long term it’ll end up having to grow as people live longer.
Dean Wehrli:
I see what you mean. So the lengthier age of folks might not catch up to what we can do with the brain immediately. Is that-
Dr. Michael Roizen:
Correct.
Dean Wehrli:
A layman’s way of explaining it. A super layman’s way of explaining it. That’s it. Anything I’m missing in housing? I know that wasn’t your section of the book, but anything? I’m just curious.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
I think not, other than the fact that there’s an enormous value created by living longer in the compounding factor, and that will we think… I mean, Peter Linneman thinks, allow us to solve a lot of the problems after some political fights over it.
Dean Wehrli:
Yeah. You know what? Again, hopefully optimistically yes. It’s going to be, it could be a blood bath, but we’ll get there. Like you said, as Winston Churchill’s statement. We’ll try everything else and then find the right solution, but I do think it’s going to be a political blood bath in the interim, for sure. Last thing just before we end is, do you worry there will be some folks who don’t want this because of… I think you posit about 450 million Americans… I’m sorry, I can’t remember what year, but in the not too distant future. Is there going to be a concern about folks thinking about overpopulation, climate change, things like that?
Dr. Michael Roizen:
The answer is yes and no. But the science in this, just the science in bio-manufacturing is such that in fact, if we did this… We’re learning how to make food in bioreactors, just like we make beer in bioreactors. We could make the food for the entire planet, literally the food for the entire planet, in bioreactors in a city three times the size of San Francisco. So, if you had a city the size of Los Angeles, you could make the food for all the world and have 40% waste. Meaning, throw away 40% of it. That’s how fast biomanufacturing will occur and that’ll occur at the same time. That’s another one of the areas that the science in gene therapy that we’ve done in aging will carry over to that. All this gene editing will allow us to gene edit so that we can produce from any yeast, not only beer, but we can produce eggs, or we can produce, if you will, salmon.
So, that’s going to we believe happen. And so, I’m literally not worried about the environment. I mean, the more immediate thing for everyone to understand, they are a genetic engineer for themselves and they control those genes and can prepare for this. One, they know they can prepare for it economically by saving more, but two, they can prepare for it physically by the same type of compounding. Doing a few, if you will, eating a little healthier now, doing a little physical activity now, if you will, sleeping a little better now. So, all of the things that we can do a little bit better managing stress will allow us to be able to reboot ourselves so that people who are 60 now, this is not out of the question, that by the time they’re 90, they will be 40 again.
Dean Wehrli:
Yeah. Okay. Again, optimistically hope so. I think that the path to get there though is going to be rocky. And the good news though is that with all these older Americans, we will almost certainly have reboots of both Matlock and Murder She Wrote. Agreed? I think we could draft that. I mean that has to happen.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
That’s correct. Yes.
Dean Wehrli:
Looking forward to that. Awesome. Mike, Dr. Roizen, thank you so much. Again, this is probably the most different thing we’ve done on this podcast, but I found the book amazingly fascinating and a good read. Go out and buy it right now. It’s The Great Age Reboot. Appreciate you coming on.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
Thank you. And obviously shifts will happen, right?
Dean Wehrli:
Yes.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
This is a huge shift that will happen.
Dean Wehrli:
That’s a tee shirt. Do that as a tee shirt. Do a tee shirt giveaway with your book. Awesome. Thanks so much. I appreciate you coming on.
Dr. Michael Roizen:
Thank you.
Dean Wehrli:
This has been Dean Wehrli with the New Home Insights Podcast. We’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.
