You're healthier than they say you are. Here's why.
It's Been a Minute
NPR
4.7 • 9.2K Ratings
🗓️ 9 March 2026
⏱️ 24 minutes
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Summary
That’s an idea that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been repeating for a while now. While there are some nuggets of truth in that – on the whole, American life expectancy has gone up a lot in Kennedy’s lifetime. So why does a backward-looking narrative serve his agenda? And what would actually move the needle forward on improving Americans’ health?
Brittany is joined by NPR health policy correspondent Selena Simmons-Duffin to get into the nuances of what “healthy” means.
Want more about modern health? Check out these episodes:
The difference between losing weight & being "healthy"
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Support for NPR and the following message come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, |
| 0:05.4 | investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people, communities, and the planet flourish. |
| 0:11.1 | More information is available at Hewlett.org. |
| 0:15.7 | Would you time travel to another time or place, if you could? |
| 0:20.5 | And if so, when and where? |
| 0:23.3 | Hmm. |
| 0:24.2 | To be honest, like, I'm not sure I would be hot on time travel, although I have just watched all three Back to the Future movies with my kids. |
| 0:31.3 | Mm. |
| 0:32.2 | Actually, I think maybe the 80s would be fun, you know, with the perms. |
| 0:36.6 | Yeah, like, just to get into the swag. |
| 0:39.2 | Get into the swag. |
| 0:40.3 | Get into the clothes. |
| 0:42.1 | I don't think I would go backward, I think, to stay for a long time. |
| 0:45.3 | One thing I would do, I would go back for, like, maybe the 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. hour to specifically go to Studio 54. That I would do. That is a good idea. |
| 0:59.4 | But then I want to be dropped off and picked up directly outside the club. |
| 1:03.3 | I know Delorean. Exactly. The Deloria needs to get me for outside the club. I'm a black woman. |
| 1:09.2 | I'm not going to the past and staying. And you know what |
| 1:12.4 | else too? I feel like there's a lot to be grateful for these days. You know, people don't smoke |
| 1:17.4 | indoors. We've got antibiotics. And it's less common to be casually exposed to lead all the time. |
| 1:24.4 | You probably have heard that even though we have all of these advancements, |
| 1:29.4 | there's an idea floating around that Americans are more unhealthy now than they were in the |
| 1:34.1 | 50s or 60s. When I was a kid, we had the healthiest kids in the world in our country. |
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