Kara Swisher Says the #1 Longevity Tool Isn't Sleep, Food, or Exercise (Plus How to Stay Consistent this Summer)

Kara Swisher, the journalist who spent months investigating longevity science for her CNN docuseries Kara Swisher Wants to Live Forever, told Robin Arzón that the single most powerful tool for living longer isn't sleep, food, or exercise. It's other people. "All the scientific evidence points to connect social connections, friends and family," Swisher said. "Don't have a chatbot boyfriend." The conversation, recorded at Cannes, wove together her debunking of expensive biohacking fads, her own modest daily habits, and a sharp critique of the wellness industry's tendency to sell people their own health back to them.

The Basics Are Free and They Work

Swisher's investigation left her skeptical of most products marketed as longevity breakthroughs. "I call it majoring in the minors," she said. "If you haven't cleaned up the basics of sleep and hydration and movement, who cares if your red light works or not?" She singled out hyperbaric chambers as genuinely dangerous for regular people—"If you don't have the bends or have a wound, you really shouldn't do it"—and dismissed the peptide craze as people injecting themselves with "off the shelf stuff that they get and a lot of it is from China." Even the obsession with step counts struck her as hollow: "What does 10,000 steps mean? I don't think it means anything."