Welcome to Running: A FEVER. My name is Michael Davis. This is a podcast about fitness, diet, and medicine. My goal is to live a long, healthy, happy, active life right up to the very end. And I’ll do it by loving my life enough to make it last as long as possible.
400 episodes? Are you kidding me? What are the odds of that? More on that later. It’s always a pleasure to know I am beating the odds, in whatever area of life I am involved in. But really, what are the odds of success, and how do we beat them?
We want to live long lives, so let’s look at the odds of that. The average life expectancy in the United States is 77. Different states have different life expectancy rates. For example, my home state of Arkansas has one of the lowest, at 73.8, but Minnesota has 79.1. I should just move to Minnesota, but I don’t think it works that way.
We already know that women have a longer life expectancy than men, by 5.7 years. That’s a lot. But I can’t change the fact that I’m a man, nor would I want to. And by the way, these stats are just stats. Life expectancy went down in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
What about living to 100? What about making it to that top-10 list of longest-lived people I do every year? It’s not an easy feat. Well, the younger you are, the better the odds you’ll live to 100. According to Stanford University’s Center on Longevity, one in every two five-year-olds alive today will live to 100. By 2050, it is predicted that life expectancy will be over 100 for all newborns.
Here are some things we can do to alter our lifestyles that will also help us to beat the odds and live longer:
Surprisingly, about 85% of centenarians live in a city or suburb. This is supposedly due to better access to healthcare, social programs, and transportation. So move to the city, folks!
Over 85% of people over 100 contact at least one person daily, a friend or family member (I guess telemarketers don’t count). So call somebody every day for your emotional health.
Faith is a factor. A National Geographic survey found that 258 out of 263 people surveyed belonged to a church or some faith organization—that’s 98%! So join a church!
So those are some good odds for you. Some are controllable, some are not. Live long and prosper.
You’ve heard the clip about me getting to my eighth episode back in 2017. I was happy because I had beat the odds—I had heard most podcasts don’t get past episode seven—so we made it to 400. What are the odds of that?
A couple of organizations have varying estimates on the number of podcasts, but it appears to be between 3.2 and 4.3 million. Believe it or not, 44% have less than three episodes. Only 720,000 have more than 10 episodes, which is only 19%. The air is getting rarer—156,000 release weekly episodes. Yep, I’m in that 4%.
So, what are the chances of making it to 400? There is slim data on that one. One report from September of 2024 says there’s a 3.79 percent chance of getting to 300, but I think that’s a mistake since they also said there’s a 1.94% chance of getting to 100 episodes. I think those numbers were switched. So there’s no more than a 2% chance of getting to my 400 episodes, probably a bit less.
We’ve beaten the odds, and we’re going to keep beating them. I’m committed to doing this podcast as long as possible, and I hope most of you will still be listening years from now. So until 500 comes, we’ll leave the stats and return to fitness, diet, and medicine.
Remember if you’ve got the fever, keep it burning. And if you don’t, catch the fever, and I will see you next time on Running: A FEVER.
References:
https://podcastpage.io/podcast-statistics/#:~:text=(there%20are%20a%20lot%20of,are%20releasing%20a%20weekly%20episode.
https://tinyurl.com/longevity-stats
https://tinyurl.com/odds-of-living-to-100
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data-visualization/state-life-expectancy/index_2020.htm
https://centershealthcare.com/media/4-ways-to-improve-your-odds-of-living-to-100/
https://podmatch.com/report