The Science of Longevity | Dr. Peter Attia
10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Media, LLC
4.6 • 12.9K Ratings
🗓️ 12 June 2023
⏱️ 90 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Editor's Note (February 2026): Since this episode was first published, documents released by the Department of Justice have revealed Peter Attia's connection to Jeffrey Epstein. We find these revelations deeply troubling and do not condone any association with Epstein or his activities.
After careful consideration, we've chosen to keep this episode in our archive. Removing it would erase a record of who we've platformed—and we think transparency is vital to building trust with our audience and community.
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.
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Most of us want to stay alive — and healthy — for as long as possible. But how to actually do that, given all the obstacles? What advice should we listen to? How do we find the time and motivation to follow it? And how do we do so without succumbing to what has been called the "subtle aggression of self improvement"?
Today, we are launching an ambitious three-week series to tackle these questions. We are bringing on top experts from science and Buddhism who will talk about how to eat better, exercise smarter, and extend your lifespan. Guest number one is Dr. Peter Attia. He has trained at Stanford University, Johns Hopkins, and the National Institutes of Health. He's the host of a popular health and fitness podcast called The Drive and the author of a new book called Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity.
In this episode we talk about:
- Why Peter kind of hates the word 'longevity'
- The definitions of 'lifespan' and 'healthspan'–and what we can do in five key areas to increase both
- The importance of exercise, including what types of exercise to do, how to measure your fitness, and how even a little bit of weekly exercise can go a very long way
- The roles our genes play in our lifespan and our healthspan
- The importance of nutrition, including Peter's top tips, his personal evolution, and his take on intuitive eating
- How to get better sleep (and when to stop tracking it)
- How to think about pharmaceutical tools, incl. a discussion of how to make sense of the crowded and unregulated supplement market
- The importance of emotional health, including a raw story from Peter about how he came to understand the importance of mental health, and why he believes tending to your emotional health makes all of the other health levers easier to pull.
Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/dr-peter-attia-608
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. |
| 0:20.3 | Hello everybody. Most of us, I think I'm safe to say this. I think most of us want to stay alive and healthy for as long as possible. |
| 0:30.0 | But how to actually do that given all of the obstacles. There's so much advice out there and it's changing all the time how do we know which experts to listen to. |
| 0:39.7 | And once we've picked our gurus, how do we find time to actually do all the shit they recommend. |
| 0:45.2 | And even if we have time, how do we motivate ourselves to get off the couch? |
| 0:49.7 | Oh, and how do we endeavor to work on our health without kicking our own ass all the time without being motivated by shame or self hatred. |
| 0:57.3 | Or a desire to get the same abs as our favorite Instagram influencers. |
| 1:02.2 | In other words, how not to succumb to what has been called. And I love this. The subtle aggression of self improvement. |
| 1:09.0 | Today we are launching an ambitious three week series to tackle these questions. |
| 1:14.4 | The timing is perfect. Of course, we're heading into summer when a lot of us start to obsess with even more intensity about how we look. |
| 1:21.3 | I thought about calling this series can a Buddhist want a beach bud. |
| 1:26.0 | Ultimately, we landed on get fit. |
| 1:28.7 | Sainly, the Buddha stress that we should get more intimate with our mortality with the non-negotiable fact that we're all going to die. |
| 1:36.0 | But nothing about that prevents us from taking care of these bodies while we've got them. |
| 1:40.6 | The trick is to do it with the right attitude. |
| 1:44.0 | So we are bringing on top experts from science and Buddhism who will talk about how to eat better exercise smarter and extend your lifespan. |
| 1:52.6 | This week we're going to talk to two scientists who are experts in longevity. A little bit more about our kickoff guest in a moment. |
| 1:59.4 | Next week, we're going to talk about how to exercise both on a very practical level and on a more psychological level, |
| 2:04.7 | meaning how to do it without being driven by self-loathing. |
| 2:07.9 | And in our final week, we're going to talk about food, the impact of specific foods on your mental health, |
| 2:13.4 | and some thoughts about how to feed yourself without getting coiled up into what researchers call orthorexia, |
| 2:20.5 | which is an unhealthy obsession with healthy food. |
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