Thanking Your Feet

EPISODE 62: Blue Zones and alleged keys to happiness.

A “Blue Zone,” according to author Dan Buettner, describes the handful of places around the world where human beings “are making it to 90 and 100 at the highest rates without the diseases that are killing Americans.” The term itself is an attempt to use demography to reverse-engineer longevity. And to learn lessons from the people who’ve figured out a way to outlive the rest of us.

This whole thing led Buettner to try the same thing for happiness, apparently — this time using the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index. Which has now resulted in 15 “cowbell” metrics that signal contentment in such zones.

It all feels stupidly simplistic.

But it also made me wonder.

And so when I returned to the decidedly non-Blue Zone that is Miami this week, for the first time since officially launching PTFO, I decided to summon both Dan Le Batard and Oddball’s Amin Elhassan — formerly of ESPN, the Phoenix Suns’ front office, and, yes, American Ninja Warrior — for a special Share & Tell.

Together, we find out how many of those 15 check-boxes go unchecked, in our own lives. And how vastly different our attempts to improve ourselves have been.

Ancestrally,

Pablo