We have this guy Jeff on the BYT staff. I don’t know exactly what his job is, but every once in a while he calls me up with some random ass scheme.

Jeff: Hey, I got us 20 minutes with Sanjay Gupta, you want to do it?

Me: Um, yeah, duh. What for?

Jeff: He’s at the book fair or something, I dunno.

Me: Sweet.

As you can see, we run quite the professional organization over here. So last Saturday I meet up with our photographer Joel and our something Jeff at the Mall, track down our press passes, and get psyched up for some serious interviewin’ when the moderator tells us we only have 5 min. Dang. I’m thinking maybe I can charm my way into at least 10.
(I can’t)

So here you have it, our 5 minute interview with the CNN’s chief medical correspondent, practicing neurosurgeon, host of House Call with Dr. Gupta, columnist for TIME, one of People magazines “Sexiest Men Alive” in 2003, and generally nice guy, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Brightest Young Things: So we usually interview indie rock stars and people like that, you’re one of our first mainstream victims, do you feel special?

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: laughs I do feel special, I’m glad I could do it.

Left my tie at home

BYT: So you’re here to promote your (sort of) new book? 

SG: Yeah, it came out in the early summer. Laura Bush, as you may know, is a librarian, and she wanted to do a book festival as part of her duties as first lady. So this is pretty cool to have this thing with the Library of Congress, she invited around 50 authors to talk about our books, answer questions, etc.

BYT: What are you doing besides this interview?

SG: I gave a talk in one of the tents they have setup over there, did about a half hour of questions afterwards.

BYT: What medical advice would you give to our loyal readers who subsist primarily on cheap beer, wear ridiculously tight pants, listen to loud music, and partake in the occasional illicit substance?

SG: Ha, well, the tight pants and the music isn’t going to hurt you. I think it’s interesting because the young people nowadays have increasingly fewer choices in terms of getting healthy food. We’ve become this completely processed food society. And I’m not someone that advocates buying all organic, or all raw, but I think we recognize now that we have a lot of empty calories in a lot of our foods. A lot of fructose, soybean oil, and all that sort of stuff which is just bad for us. And as a Dr. I hear about people having heart attacks in their late 20’s an early 30’s, and that is probably getting close to your typical reader’s age. And those were the things you thought were for 60 and 70 year old people. So I’d say you have to make your health a priority no matter how young you are, because these things can spiral very quickly out of control.

BYT: The focus of your book is tips to help people extend their lives?

SG: Well, I figured that people around the world are obviously doing something better than we are. I mean Okinawa has the highest concentration of people who live to a hundred of any place on the planet. So I went to all these places, I went to Okinawa, I went to Sardinia, Costa Rica, Moscow, and learned what they were doing, and I tried to find things that we could apply to our lives. So like I don’t take any supplements anymore, I try to have seven different colored foods a day, I try an add upper body strength training to my workout. I mainly just ran and did aerobics before, but now I know that adding upper body strength training can extend your life, every study has shown that. Although, I think the most interesting thing for me, and it’s sort of non-intuitive, is this whole idea that it’s worthwhile philosophically to examine what our sense of purpose is every given day. It doesn’t have to be something profound, or necessarily very deep, but everyone has to have some sort of sense of purpose, and it gives you that will to live. If you ask the Japanese why they live so long they’ll say, we have a will to live. Every morning you wake up, think about it for 10 or 15 seconds, it makes a difference.

BYT: Yes, but my generation hopes to die before they get old. I kid. Any embarrassing gastro-intestinal issues of CNN staff we can make a fart joke about?

SG: Uh, no, but every now and then it smells a little funny on the Atlanta set, but I’m not quite sure where that comes from.

BYT: Will you take a picture with me with this thermometer in your mouth?

SG: No.

BYT: Ok. Does masturbation make you go blind?

SG: I’m not going to answer that.

Moderator: one more question

BYT: Ok, ok, why do you hate Michael Moore?
(see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQUkxX-3udg)

SG: I don’t hate Michael Moore, you know, Michael and I have talked about the same things, which is trying to make sure people get health insurance. I think we live in a society where people want to make it red or blue and black or white, either you’re for what somebody says or you’re against them, period. I think the guy takes some liberty with his data, which is unfortunate cause he doesn’t need to. I think you got a lot of people who are paying a lot of attention to health care policy in our country and we want to make sure we do it right, that we create a sustainable health care system that can provide health insurance for everybody, and if we don’t do it right this time I don’t know if we’re going to have many shots at it.

BYT: But why nitpick on numbers that end up portraying the same picture anyway (and in the process self-admittedly getting some numbers wrong yourself)? Don’t you think your time would be better spent promoting his ideas that you do agree with?
(see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH3YQidk5As and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjvlGRfozss)

At this point the moderator cuts us off and I go in for the kiss goodbye, bust Sanjay is already on his way back to Atlanta.

Me: Well that was kinda lame.

Jeff: What do you want to do now?

Me: Walk around the book fair and take pictures of cute chicks?

Joel: Works for me.

So now I present you with a pretty self indulgent set entitled:
“Two Jackasses at the Book Fair”

  
  
This girl’s manger was very concerned that we were a porn site     

 
Piggy lost his pants, Jeff points and laughs

    
 
 
 
 
   
  
  The thermometer 

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