Longevity Science Without the Fear or Bullshit | Dr. Kerry Burnight
10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Media, LLC
4.6 • 12.2K Ratings
🗓️ 17 November 2025
⏱️ 78 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
An expert in Gerontology shares the four core habits for aging well.
Dr. Kerry Burnight is a gerontologist, caregiver advocate, and founder of the Gerontology Institute at UC Irvine. Her new book, Joyspan: The Art and Science of Thriving in Life's Second Half, offers a practical framework for aging not just longer, but better.
In this episode we talk about:
- Misconceptions about the aging process
- The anti-aging industry and what it gets wrong
- Four core habits for aging well
- How to diversify your "social portfolio"
- Coping strategies for adapting in the face of change
- The key question to ask yourself if you want to live a longer and happier life
- The strengths that come with age
- Tools for navigating inevitable psychological dips
- And much more
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Additional Resources:
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Dr. Burnight's social: @the_gerontologist
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. |
| 0:18.7 | Hey, hey, everybody. How we doing? I love this story. When my uncle, it's a short story, don't worry, when my uncle Peter, shout out to Peter, when Peter turned 60, he was asked how he felt and he said, off the hook. I love that story. And it represents two of the good things that can happen and often do happen |
| 0:38.5 | when you get older. First, you start taking yourself less seriously. And second, you care less |
| 0:44.6 | about what other people think about you. In other words, you have fewer fucks to give. The other |
| 0:49.4 | good news about aging is the fact that your genetics are not your destiny. In other words, just because your parents may not have aged well, that doesn't mean it's going to happen to you. |
| 1:00.1 | You have some agency here. |
| 1:01.4 | There are practical things that you can do to increase your so-called joy span, which my guest will explain fully in a minute. |
| 1:08.9 | But for now, just know that increasing your joy span |
| 1:11.1 | increases both your health span and your lifespan. And there's more good news. Working on this stuff now, |
| 1:18.6 | no matter what your age is, can not only lengthen your life, but it can also improve your life. |
| 1:24.2 | In other words, it is possible to get the benefits of age, the wisdom that naturally accrues to many of us. |
| 1:30.6 | It is possible to pull those benefits forward, whether you're in your 20s, your 30s, your 40s, your 50s, whatever. |
| 1:37.2 | My guest today is Dr. Kerry Burnight. We spent many years teaching geriatric medicine and gerontology at the University of California Irvine School of Medicine. |
| 1:45.7 | She's got a new book called Joy Spann, The Art and Science of Thriving in Life's Second Half. |
| 1:50.5 | We talk about some big misconceptions about the aging process, the many problems of the |
| 1:55.8 | anti-aging industry, four core habits for aging well, how to diversify your social portfolio, coping |
| 2:03.3 | strategies for adapting in the face of change, the key question to ask yourself if you want |
| 2:07.5 | to live a longer and happier life, the strengths that come with age, some tools for navigating |
| 2:12.5 | inevitable psychological dips, and much more. |
| 2:16.0 | If you want to go deeper on how to make peace with the |
| 2:18.7 | non-negotiable fact of change, we have a new meditation that comes with this podcast. It comes from |
| 2:24.3 | our teacher of the month, Christiana Wolf. You should go check it out. Also to say Cristiano |
... |
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