How Luck and Chance Shape Your Life & The Science of Slowing Aging – SYSK Choice

When you buy fruits and vegetables, how much pesticide residue is actually on them? Is it something you should worry about—or not? And does buying organic really make a meaningful difference? Recent findings offer some answers that may surprise you. https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-contaminants/produce-without-pesticides-a5260230325/ We tend to believe that hard work and good decisions determine how life turns out. But luck and random chance play a much bigger role than most people realize. From career paths to relationships to financial success, unexpected events often shape outcomes in powerful ways. Mark Robert Rank, professor at Washington University in St. Louis and author of The Random Factor: How Chance and Luck Profoundly Shape Our Lives and the World Around Us (https://amzn.to/3W1mDb4), explains how luck operates in everyday life—and how understanding it can help you better navigate uncertainty and make smarter choices. Every living thing ages—but not at the same rate. Some organisms live for just days, while others survive for centuries. What determines how quickly we age? And is it possible to slow the process in humans? Venki Ramakrishnan, Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist and author of Why We Die (https://amzn.to/49KII0z), explains what science has uncovered about aging, why it happens, and what current research suggests about extending healthy lifespan. You’ve heard the advice to stop and smell the roses—but there may be something else just as powerful you’re overlooking. Paying attention to certain everyday sounds could have a surprisingly positive effect on how you feel. https://www.treehugger.com/why-do-birds-sing-5179422 PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS POCKET HOSE: For a limited time, when you purchase a new Pocket Hose Ballistic, you'll get a FREE 360 degree rotating pocket pivot and a FREE thumb drive nozzle! Just text SYSK to 64000 RULA: Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Rula.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get started. QUINCE: Refresh your wardrobe with Quince! Go to https://Quince.com/sysk for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! SHOPIFY: See less carts go abandoned with Shopify and their Shop Pay button! Sign up for your $1 per month trail and start selling today at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Shopify.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ PLANET VISIONARIES : We love the Planet Visionaries podcast! In partnership with The Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Listen or watch on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you are listening to this podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:31Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know: The pesticides used on produce. Are they safe, or are they not? Then, how to create your own luck. Because doing so is absolutely necessary.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  There's been a lot of interesting research. And what it shows is that people that really hit it big in terms of wealth, or in terms of fame, yes, they had the necessary talent and skills, but they also had the big break. And they had luck go their way. And that's the other crucial ingredient.

• 1:02Mike Carruthers?

  Also, why you really need to stop and listen to the birds singing outside. And the very latest developments on aging and living longer.

• 1:12Speaker 03

  People who study the biology of aging have found it striking that some of the age-old advice exercise, eating moderately, and getting enough sleep affect many of the major pathways of aging.

• 1:26Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know. Now, here's something that might be worth a minute of your time. How would you like $1,000 to spend on shopping? Especially with the holidays coming. Well, the people behind Shopify have a shopping site called shop.com. And to celebrate the new shop.com, they're giving away $1 million in ShopCash. But not to one person. 1,000 people will each win $1,000 in ShopCash.

• 2:00Mike Carruthers?

  And shop.com is actually a really clever idea. It brings lots of different stores together in one place. So, instead of bouncing around from website to website, you can search across stores, find what you're looking for, and track your orders, all in one place. Clothes, electronics, gifts, things for the house, all kinds of stuff. And whether you win or not, it's worth knowing. But with a thousand chances to win $1,000, I'd certainly take a look. Enter to win the $1 million Shop Cash Giveaway from now until November 1st. Just go to shop.com. There are so many ways to win.

• 2:44Mike Carruthers?

  That's shop.com. Shopping designed around you. No purchase necessary. Restrictions apply. Official rules available at shop.com.

• 2:56Speaker 04

  Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life today. Something you should know with Mike Carruthers.

• 3:09Mike Carruthers?

  Hi, welcome. I want to start today on Something You Should Know with something I've wondered about for the longest time. As I understand it, the difference between organic produce and conventionally grown produce is growers of conventional produce can use chemical pesticides. Organic growers cannot. But then we hear frequently that the levels of pesticides on conventional produce are low, and that the more dangerous pesticides have been banned, so there's really nothing to worry about. Still, a lot of people buy organic because they don't want pesticides on their food. So which is it? Are pesticides on conventionally grown produce nothing to worry about?

• 3:54Mike Carruthers?

  Or not? Well, Consumer Reports just did an investigation and published a report, and it says that, well, that there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that pesticides posed significant risk in 20% of the foods they looked at. These included bell peppers, blueberries, green beans, potatoes, and strawberries. One food, in fact, green beans, had residue of a pesticide that hasn't been allowed to be used on vegetables in the U.S. for over 10 years. And imported produce, especially from Mexico, was particularly likely to carry risky levels of pesticide residue. And there was good news.

• 4:36Mike Carruthers?

  Pesticides presented little to worry about in nearly 2/3 of the produce they tested, including nearly all of the organic ones. An example of how tricky this gets, though, is that only 11 out of the 330 watermelons they tested had high levels of a pesticide. But they had really high levels, and there's no way for you, as the consumer, to tell. I suggest you read this report, particularly if you have children in the family, or are or plan to get pregnant. There's a link to the report from Consumer Reports in the show notes, and that is something you should know. Just how lucky are you?

• 5:21Mike Carruthers?

  When you think about your life and how luck and chance have played a role, was it good luck, bad luck, maybe a little bit of both? You see, luck is a very big player in our lives, whether you realize it or not. And when you pay attention to how luck works in your life, you can actually create more good luck in your life, which you're about to hear about from Mark Robert Rank. He is a professor of social welfare at Washington University in St. Louis and author of the book, "The Random Factor: How Chance and Luck Profoundly Shape Our Lives and the World Around Us." Hi, Mark, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  Thanks a lot, Michael. Great to be with you.

• 6:04Mike Carruthers?

  So I have always thought that luck is such a big force in almost everybody's life and a force that nobody really pays attention to. And so I think it's important, but I'd like to know why you think it's important.

• 6:20Speaker 02

  Well, I think actually a lot of times people don't place a lot of emphasis on luck and chance. You know, as I talk about, I think it really has a profound influence, both in terms of how our lives play out and in terms of the world around us. And there's a lot of things that we can, we can learn from, I think, a greater appreciation of the role of randomness, luck and chance.

• 6:44Mike Carruthers?

  So, explain the role of randomness, luck and chance, because as you say, people don't really take it into consideration much, don't think about it much. So, how do they affect us?

• 6:55Speaker 02

  History has been shaped by many chance and luck and random kind of events in quite profound ways. The natural world around us, when we think about natural selection and, and all kinds of sort of processes is also very much, the element of randomness is very important in terms of those processes. And then again, in terms of just, you know, the way that our lives play out, there's just a lot of randomness, luck and chance. And I should say, you know, the way that I kind of got into this was a earlier book of mine that was looking at the American dream. And in that book, I interviewed 75 people from all walks of life, and I was interested in their life stories and, and what had happened to them.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  But one of the things I didn't anticipate was over and over, people would say things like, you know, if I hadn't run into that person, or if this hadn't happened, or if I hadn't been at the right place at the right time, or the wrong place at the wrong time, my life would be much different than it, than it is now. And I started thinking about that. And it actually, it's, this is a kind of a phenomenon that really has not been studied very much in the social sciences, which is where I'm coming from. So, so in many different ways, it's, it's really, really significant, but a lot of times underplayed and underappreciated.

• 8:18Mike Carruthers?

  And yet, I bet anybody who would just stop and think about it, and think about the random events in their life, the people that came into their lives, or the place they were at, or something happened, has had a significant, significant impact on their life, and that it's happened several times.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  Absolutely, absolutely. So if you think about, take for example, who your significant other is. I've, I mean, I'm almost, it's almost universal. People will say, you know, it was kind of a chance encounter. We were at a party, or this person was there, and I was there, or this kind of thing. And now, certainly, your life would take a different path if that hadn't happened. And we don't know what that would look like. But the specifics in your life are very much influenced by randomness. There's certainly currents that push your life in a certain direction, you know? And as a sociologist, I study things like social class, and race, and gender. And those are all really important.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  But within those currents are a lot of ripples of randomness. And that's the way I like to think about, you know, the world is not just all luck and chance, but it's not all just a fait accompli. It's how these two things interact with each other.

• 9:34Mike Carruthers?

  But because by its very nature, luck and chance are luck and chance. They happen when they happen. They, then, that's the kind of the beginning and the end of it. And then, there's not much more to do other than maybe to say, so since luck and chance play a big role, get out there and have more luck and chance encounters.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, one of the things that I talk about is what are some of the lessons that we can learn from appreciating that the world we live in is very random, and that there is a lot of luck and chance. And I think there are many, many different lessons. And one of them... Is to keep your eyes open for opportunities that may come your way. You know, there are things that happen that you have no control over. But what do you do when they come across your plate? What do you do with those opportunities? And so that's one of the things that, again, it's not just a fait accompli. It's an interaction between things that happen that may be beyond your control. But then how do you react to those kinds of things? So it's a very dynamic process that I think is really interesting.

• 10:40Mike Carruthers?

  So understanding that these chance events, these chance meetings, these lucky things that can happen really on a daily basis. What do we do with this? How do we maximize this if there is a way so we have more luck?

• 10:58Speaker 02

  Well, one way to think about this is, okay, as we live our lives, and this gets to some of the work that I've done in the past dealing with poverty. So if you look at over a long period of time, it's interesting that actually most Americans at some point in their lives will experience at least one year in poverty. Now, why does that happen? Well, it happens because over a long period of time, kind of bad things can happen to people. A family can split up, you could lose a job, you can get sick, a pandemic can happen. All those kinds of things might occur over a long period of time. A lot of people say, oh, well, that will never happen to me. But actually, as I said, about three quarters of all Americans at some point in their lives will experience a year in poverty. So that's certainly one of the implications from thinking about that,

• 11:43Speaker 02

  you know, there is randomness and there is bad luck out there. And how can we deal with that? And how can we address that?

• 11:48Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, because although you know it may be coming, it's impossible to know what it is that's coming, you know? Like, you know something's gonna go wrong with your car one day, but you don't know if it's gonna be the brakes or the, you know, the tires. You don't know what it is, but something's gonna go wrong.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. So I think that that's one among many lessons that we can learn from this, you know, sort of greater appreciation in terms of how randomness may affect our lives.

• 12:15Mike Carruthers?

  But is there any sense that the people who do something different with the luck that comes their way, good or bad, have a better outcome because they do something?

• 12:28Speaker 02

  So a lot of times, people will say to me, they'll say, you know, it's interesting. You're doing a book on luck and chance, but you know, I make my own luck. What that really means is what we were talking about a minute ago, which is when things happen to you out of the blue, what do you do with that? How do you react to that? What's your response to that? And that's what a lot of times people mean when they say things like, I make my own luck. You know, a pastor had the saying, luck favors the prepared mind. So that's something that definitely people can think about, you know, folks that are listening here can think about in terms of their own lives.

• 13:08Mike Carruthers?

  Well, it's interesting that, and it must be hard for you to study luck because luck happens in unpredictable ways. If it was predictable, it wouldn't be luck. If it's a system, if it's, if it's a managed outcome, then it's not luck. That's the kind of the definition of luck. And it's interesting how people say they know how to be lucky, often in gambling, but if you have a system to be lucky, then, then I don't think it's luck. Then it's just a managed outcome.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  Here's a way that people are often fooled by luck. And you're, you're probably aware of this and our listeners here are probably too, you know, which is called the gambler's fallacy. And that is, what that is, it's, it's applying probability. So we know what a probability is in terms of flipping a coin or the ball in roulette, roulette, landing on red or black, it's 50/50 basically. But when you look at a small sample of occurrences, it may not be 50/50. And so what happens is there's been really interesting research looking at casinos. If you're playing roulette and the ball is, has landed on black four, five, or six times

• 14:23Speaker 02

  in a row, most of the bets now will be placed on red. Now, it's still only 50/50 that it might be black or red, but people are thinking, oh, it's overdue. It has to come out red or black because it hasn't been that way. That's not true. True. The overall odds, if you do it a thousand times, will be 50/50. But if you only, if you only spin the wheel 10 or 20 times, it could be quite different than that. And so that's something that you can learn, you know, when you think about probabilities and chance. These are some of the lessons that you can learn. So don't, don't be fooled by thinking that your luck may turn around if you've had a spell of, of good luck or bad luck. It may, it may not. Over a long period of time, it probably will.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  But in terms of a short period of time at the casino, it may very well not.

• 15:09Mike Carruthers?

  We're talking about how important randomness and luck are in how your life goes. And my guest is Mark Robert Rank, author of the book, The Random Factor.

• 15:21Speaker 00

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• 15:51Speaker 05

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• 16:20Mike Carruthers?

  So Mark, do you think you can say, because you've mentioned several times that, you know, random things happen to people? That meeting on the train, the, the random occurrence that happens that. Turns into something. So therefore, you might want to come to the conclusion that so you should do a lot more of that because luck will come your way as opposed to staying home and watching television where you're not out interacting with the world where that's where the luck is, good and bad. If you're home watching TV, you're just home watching TV.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  That's really interesting, Mike. That's a really interesting point. I hadn't really thought of that. But yeah, you're right. If you're out there, there's more opportunities for interesting things to happen to you. There's also, the other side is there's more opportunities for bad things to happen to you. So that's kind of the other side of the coin here. But absolutely, you know, another, another sort of example I give is, which is related to what you're bringing up, is the more irons you have in the fire, the more likely you are to have something good happen to you. And so, you know, like, for example, when I send out things, you know, publications at various places, the odds are at any point

• 17:40Speaker 02

  that it's going to be rejected. But if I send that out to eight or 10 places, the odds are probably pretty good that one or two of them will accept what I'm, when I'm sending them. And so that's that idea of increasing your chances, increasing your odds by having more irons in the fire. And that's, I think, a really valuable lesson for, for people to, to take away with.

• 18:02Mike Carruthers?

  And sadly, that lesson has been well learned by people who send spam and things. They'll send millions of them because they know the more they send, the more likely somebody's going to fall for it.

• 18:13Speaker 02

  That's right. That's right. It, you know, but a really good example of, of, of the importance of having irons in the fire is if you look at well-known authors like Hemingway or J.K. Rowling, they had their, they had their first manuscripts rejected like 10, 15, 20 times before it was finally accepted. Harry Potter was rejected by 11 or 12 publishers before one finally accepted it. And that shows you that in some sense,

• 18:43Speaker 02

  Being persistent is really important. And how many really well-known authors just gave up? You know, or that would have been a well-known author, that would have been a well-regarded author. They just gave up because it was like, it was too much. And so, one of the things is, look, you shouldn't pursue things to the end of the earth, but you should give it a pretty fair shot before you give up on something, because it probably will be the case that it, at some point, will be, you know, a positive outcome.

• 19:14Mike Carruthers?

  But there's a difference between persistence and luck.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  Yes, but you can, by being persistent, you can increase your odds in terms of having good luck. I think that's one of the ways of taking advantage of randomness that's out there and using it to your, you know, and using it to your advantage.

• 19:32Mike Carruthers?

  But it's interesting, you know, when you're playing roulette, it truly is luck. When you're trying to get published, it may be luck, but it also, it has to be good. Like, you can't just scribble with a crayon on 200 pages and just send it out to millions of people and say, "Well, I got a lot of irons in the fire." It still has to be good.

• 19:54Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And so, things like talent and skill are very important. But the way I like to think about it, and this is true with entertainers and musicians, it's a necessary, but it's not a sufficient condition. You have to have, yes, you have to have the ability, you have to have the talent. It has to be a good product. But just because it is, doesn't mean that you're going to be successful. I've interviewed lots of entertainers and musicians who are extremely talented and never got the big break. And there's been a lot of, some really, as I said before, really interesting research that has looked at this. And what it shows is that people that really hit it big in terms of wealth

• 20:37Speaker 02

  or in terms of fame, yes, they had the necessary talent and skills, but they also had the big break, and they had luck go their way. And that's the other crucial ingredient. So, having talent and skills is necessary for getting ahead, but it's not sufficient.

• 20:54Mike Carruthers?

  But there are people that consider themselves to be lucky, or there are people who consider themselves to be very unlucky. Or we see people and look at their life and say, "God, you've had a, just a slew of bad luck." And you wonder, "Well, why is that? Why isn't it more..." Spaced out, why doesn't everybody get a little bit of everything? Why do some people just get nailed and others seem to just live a charmed life?

• 21:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a really, really interesting observation. And we often want the world to be, to reflect a sense of justice. That, you know, what you put into something should reflect what you get back. There's a sense of balance here. Well, randomness does not abide by that. It may balance out, it may not balance out. And in fact, I would argue that, and this is based on some other work that I've done, that what can often happen is good luck can follow good luck and bad luck can follow bad luck. So if you think about the lottery of birth, where we are, you know, first of all, that, we'll talk about randomness, the fact that you and I are born, are the odds of it are,

• 22:05Speaker 02

  you know, trillions to one that we're even here. But we're born into a certain circumstance, and some are born with more advantages than others. If you're born with advantages, there's more likely that you will see some of the good breaks in life than if you're born into poverty, where you're more likely to see some of the bad breaks. And this is what's known as cumulative advantage or disadvantage. And that is that things do not necessarily even out, that the rich may get richer and the poor get poor. And in terms of good breaks and bad breaks, you often will see that play out in this way.

• 22:41Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I just think it's fun to think about all the luck in your life, I mean, good and bad. I mean, when you look back and see the things that have happened and how so much of it is just luck, chance.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  There's a lot of positives in terms of thinking about, you know, that the world does have a lot of randomness and chance. One of the things that I, that I talk about is how boring would this world be if everything was predictable? What a boring place that would be. The fact that you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, that's the spice of life. That's what gives life its energy. The other thing that I talk about that I think is, is a very positive thing, is that with chance comes hope.

• 23:29Speaker 02

  And hope is something that is very important in how we live our lives. We often need to have something that we hope for, that we look forward to in the future. It may not happen, it may happen, but the hope is there. And that's what gives life its real kind of energy and sort of drive. And I think that those are very important. But again, going back to if the world was totally predictable, this would be a really boring place. And so, you know, chance and luck and randomness give the spice to life.

• 24:04Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I've always believed if you're gonna make your own luck, you have to get out there, meet people, be in situations. But people don't often think of that as luck. They think of that as, well, see, I'm out there, I'm doing things. It's me, it's, I'm in charge of my life. But you could, you could go out and do those very same things and not have good results if it weren't for a little bit of luck.

• 24:29Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. And, you know, you've got to be in the game. You have to be playing the game for things to happen. If you're sitting at home, yeah, no, nothing is gonna happen. But, but if you're out there, lots of things could happen to you. And so, yeah, I think that that's definitely right. And that's kind of that same idea that I mentioned about having irons in the fire and, you know, having things out there. And some of those will, may come, come, come, come through in your favor.

• 24:58Mike Carruthers?

  You know, it's interesting. I think a lot of the reason that people don't have a lot of irons in the fire is they're afraid of what other people will think. That maybe they're not really qual, maybe they shouldn't try because people will think they're not qualified, or maybe they, they shouldn't go for that job because they don't really have the exact experience that they asked for or something. And they don't want people to think they're desperate or, like, the worry of what other people will think, I think, stops people from trying to be lucky.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  I think you're exactly right. You know, Somebody once said, you know, to be an actor, you have to have the height of a rhinoceros. You have to be able to take rejection. And that's, that's true in life in general. You know, look, I, you know, you and I, we do different things. We're, I'm sure we, both of us face rejections all the time. But we also have things that are positive that come out of that. And so you, you gotta be able to sort of put that aside and say, look, not everybody's gonna vote for me or not everybody's gonna give me a good review or whatever it may be. But, you know, I'm gonna be out there. I'm gonna do my best. I'm gonna put this out and let's see what happens. And that's, that's again, what's interesting about life.

• 26:13Mike Carruthers?

  Well, it's a fun topic to talk about because you, you can actually, you know, maneuver your own luck to some degree. And it's just interesting to understand how it works. I've been speaking with Mark Robert Rank. He is a professor of social welfare at Washington University in St. Louis. And the name of his book is The Random Factor. How Chance and Luck Profoundly Shape Our Lives and the World Around Us. And there's a link to his book at, and there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you, Mark. Appreciate you coming on.

• 26:45Speaker 00

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• 27:15Speaker 05

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• 27:48Mike Carruthers?

  How long will you live? I think that's a question we've all asked ourselves. And we all have at least a general idea of the things that are in our control to help ensure that we live a long time. But what is being done scientifically to better understand the aging process and the things that ultimately will cause us to die? And then how is that being translated into a fight against aging that will allow us to live longer and healthier? Well, that's what Nobel Prize winning molecular biologist Venky Ramakrishnan is here to discuss. Venky is author of a book called Why We Die. Welcome, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 28:31Speaker 03

  Hello, pleased to be here.

• 28:34Mike Carruthers?

  Okay, so you're a Nobel Prize winning molecular biologist who studies aging. Explain what you do every day.

• 28:42Speaker 03

  The work I do, which is about how proteins are made and how that production of proteins is regulated by the body, is very closely connected with aging. Because when those processes break down, they're one of the main causes, they're one of the fundamental causes of aging.

• 29:02Mike Carruthers?

  It's not just we that age. Every living thing dies. I mean, I think, isn't that the part of the definition of any living thing is that it will die? If it can't die, it isn't really alive, right?

• 29:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. I'll give you two, I'd say two things about that. One is, although all living things are made of the same material, they're all made of DNA and proteins and, you know, cell membranes and things like that, they have vastly different lifespans. For example, a butterfly or an insect might live only for days. And at the other end, you have some whales and sharks that live for a few hundred years. Tortoises can live for 200 or more years. And that means there's probably a Galapagos tortoise around now that was around when

• 29:59Speaker 03

  Darwin first observed them 150 years ago. That's, to me, is amazing. So, why is it that...

• 30:08Speaker 03

  Although we're made of the same thing, we all have such different lifespans. That's one of the interesting questions about the field. But I want to go beyond that. It's not just living things that age and die. Death is aging and death is a property of complex systems. For example, companies have a growth phase, a plateau, and then decay and death. No company lasts forever. You could even say the same thing about cities. And while they're working, nobody imagines that this city is not going to exist one day. But history is full of cities that were flourishing hundreds of years ago and today are in ruins.

• 30:52Speaker 03

  So I think aging is more generally a property of complex systems.

• 30:58Mike Carruthers?

  And do you see, do you believe, do you hope that one day we will be immortal? That we'll live forever? We won't age? Because that just seems, well, it seems impossible.

• 31:11Speaker 03

  I personally believe that it, if not impossible, it's extremely difficult. I would put it in the same category as our ability to settle in a different galaxy or even on Mars. There's no physical law that says we can't colonize Mars or we can't travel to a different galaxy. But in practice, the difficulties are enormous. It's impossible today, and we don't know when it'll be possible. And I would put this idea of being immortal in that same category.

• 31:49Mike Carruthers?

  But no matter how much you slow down the aging process, and we've, I think it's safe to say we have slowed it down. I mean, people seem to be healthier longer than they used to be. We've slowed down the aging process, but eventually, time takes a toll. Things wear out, things die, houses die, cars die, blenders die, and people die.

• 32:15Speaker 03

  That's one way of looking at it, but that's not entirely true. For example, if you had a car, well, I'll give you a better example. I have a bicycle. My bicycle is from 1978. And over the course of time, I have replaced just about every part on that bicycle. So it's still this, I think of it as the same bicycle, but it's been constantly replaced and renewed. And you might do the same thing with a car. You could replace the engine, you could replace the wheels, you could replace almost every piece of the car. So you could say, yes, there's wear and tear, but if you're able to regenerate it,

• 32:59Speaker 03

  replace it with new parts, then you can keep it going forever. And the question is whether it's the same thing or not, whether the same car, if you've replaced everything about it. And many people would argue if you replace it very gradually, then it really is the same car. Perhaps a better analogy is an orchestra. Let's say the New York Philharmonic. Individual members come and go. They, they, they grow old, they retire, or sometimes they die, conductors come and go. But the New York Philharmonic survives. It, it's still the New York Philharmonic, it keeps on playing.

• 33:40Speaker 03

  And so there are different ways of looking at what it is about immortality. Now, the question is, can we replace everything about ourselves? At the moment, we're nowhere near it.

• 33:55Mike Carruthers?

  Is anyone even trying? I mean, is there, i- i- is that a science thing that people are attempting to do? Even though it may be very preliminary?

• 34:05Speaker 03

  There are scientists who are trying to reprogram cells to try and make older cells go backward in time so that they can regenerate worn out tissue, regenerate aging tissue. That's all working at one level, but it's not working at the level of the entire individual.

• 34:28Speaker 03

  People have done this in mice. For example, they've done some sort of cellular reprogramming in mice. And they found that by some criteria, the mice look younger. They have younger fur. They have biomarkers that they measure, which suggest that they've actually stopped aging or aged or become younger. But no one knows how long this is going to last. No one knows about the long term safety. And one of the things about us is the brain. No one has shown that we can regenerate tissues in the brain because the brain doesn't regenerate

• 35:13Speaker 03

  very, very well. Most of our neurons don't turn over. So there's promise there, but we're a long way from the kind of breakthrough that will say, okay, we can sort of rejuvenate someone.

• 35:31Mike Carruthers?

  Other than having conversations like this about wouldn't it be wonderful or wouldn't it be interesting if we could? Why is this important? Because it seems, as you just said, we're far, far away from being immortal. And it seems more like medicine kind of tries to squeeze a few more years out of us, you know, by transplanting this or giving medication for that. But you're talking about something else that seems almost science fiction. So why are we talking about this?

• 36:01Speaker 03

  Great question. And that's because most of the, what I call the rational side of the aging community is not about living longer. It's if we understand the causes of aging, we might be able to do something that will allow us to live healthier lives. Why should you think that aging is the thing to tackle? Well, take almost every disease that's a major risk factor today. For example, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia like Alzheimer's.

• 36:41Speaker 03

  All of those diseases are directly correlated with aging. The older you are, the greater your risk for getting one of these diseases. So a lot of people in the biology community have asked, wait a minute. If aging is increasing the risk of each of these completely different diseases, maybe we should be tackling aging. Maybe we should be understanding the causes of aging to try to see if we can slow it down to the point where you're protected against some of these horrible debilitating diseases of old age.

• 37:23Speaker 03

  There's a debate about whether doing so will actually extend our lives or whether it means that we will simply live a bigger fraction of our lives more healthily and then suddenly, you know, have a system-wide collapse and die. Now, that seems very unlikely. This idea that we're healthy all our lives and then suddenly collapse, it's called compression of morbidity. It means you take those years of morbid life and compress them into just a few years.

• 38:00Mike Carruthers?

  But that's the advice we hear a lot. I mean, people I interview here often say that a healthy lifestyle, you know, diet, exercise, don't smoke, that doing those things will help you live a long life and a healthy life and then compress those sick years that lead to death at the end, compress those and you go pretty quickly. That's all, that's already kind of in the, the conversation. So there must be some evidence, some research that, that there is a way to do that, to compress those sick times at the end. Seems like it's being done already.

• 38:37Speaker 03

  The one thing that suggests that there's something there is the study of centenarians. So someone named Tom Pearls, who's a heads up the New England Centenarian Study in Boston.

• 38:51Speaker 03

  Has been studying centenarians for many, many years. And one thing he's found is, and this is particularly true of what he calls super centenarians. These are people who live to be over 110 or semi super centenarians who live to be 105. These people spend a very short time in poor health. So they're healthy and independent for most of their lives. And suddenly they decline and die. So somehow these people have solved that problem of compression of morbidity. And I think understanding the causes of aging and perhaps studying these centenarians,

• 39:35Speaker 03

  what is special about them, what's special about their lifestyle, their genetics, that might provide us clues on how to live a healthy life while we're alive.

• 39:47Mike Carruthers?

  Well, that's always the concern is that you can, if you extend somebody's life, but you're just extending the misery at the end, that what's the point as opposed to, you know, I want to be 30 longer, not 130 longer.

• 40:01Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And that, that is a real dilemma. And I have to admit, it is not a solved problem. Because virtually everything we've done about some of these diseases of aging, for example, heart disease or high blood pressure. Virtually every one of these things has prolonged our life. But we have not extended the fraction of our lives that is actually healthy. So every Western country is full of care homes with people who are, you know, not doing so well, they're alive, but they have lots and lots of health problems. So that is, that is a serious problem.

• 40:45Speaker 03

  How to extend healthy life and compress the part that we live in poor health.

• 40:52Mike Carruthers?

  In this conversation of aging and living longer, there's always this element, this undercurrent of, but you never know. You know, you could get hit by a bus tomorrow or you could suddenly get cancer and nobody knows why and it kills you or, or whatever. But when you take that out, when you take that out of the conversation, because you have no control over that. There are some things, it seems, that people can do now that we know really helps longevity.

• 41:27Speaker 03

  In fact, people who study the biology of aging have found it striking that some of the age-old advice that we've been given, and the three things that I think are key are exercise, eating moderately, and eating healthily, and getting enough sleep. These three things affect many of the major pathways of aging. And so the advice we may have gotten from our grandmothers is actually true. Of course, added on to this is stress, but of course, exercise and sleep actually help to reduce stress. So they're all related. So there are things we can do.

• 42:13Mike Carruthers?

  So what is your hope? What is the message? What is it you want people to take away from this?

• 42:21Speaker 03

  Well, what I'd like people to take away from this is several things. First of all, there is no physical law that limits our lifespan. We live to be... The oldest person recorded is 122. Nobody else that we know of has even exceeded 120. So given our current biology, we do have a limited lifespan. But there's nothing to say that we cannot alter things about ourselves that might extend it beyond 120 or 122. That is an amazing thing. It's not around the corner.

• 43:06Speaker 03

  It may not happen for hundreds of years. We may need to understand a lot more before that happens, but just knowing that, to me, is amazing. But knowing the causes of aging allows us to tackle aging at a fundamental level. And if you tackle aging at a fundamental level, it might help us against diseases that are caused by aging. For example, if we understand what is it about aging that makes you more predisposed to Alzheimer's? That would be a big deal. If we could slow that down or prevent that, then we would be able to live without that

• 43:51Speaker 03

  fear of dementia. If we could improve our ability to tackle cancer. Now, cancer is tackled at many different levels, but one of the causes, one of the risk factors for cancer is also aging. As we get older, we're more likely to get cancer. So I think there are lots of reasons why it's good to understand why we age.

• 44:18Mike Carruthers?

  A lot of, it seems, from talking to you, a lot of the talk about how we're going to increase longevity in people is the result of lifestyle and biology, diet, exercise, sleep. But my guess is that there's money in this, that, and there's technology in this, that. So where is the money? Who's investing? And how are they investing? I imagine it's tech people, right?

• 44:46Speaker 03

  A lot of it is funded by tech billionaires. Most of them are middle-aged men, and they're used to getting everything they want. And the one thing they can't get is youth. And there's a famous saying, which is, when they were young, they wanted to be rich. And now that they're rich, they want to be young. But of course, they can't buy youth. But what they can buy is research. They can fund research in aging. And so that's funding a lot of research.

• 45:19Speaker 03

  And it's distorting the field. The field has become full of hype. Every time you open up a newspaper or magazine or a blog, you say, you think of some, you read about some advance. And this could be the cause of aging or that could cure aging. And I think understanding the fundamental biology of why we age will not only allow us to live better and also approach life in a better way, but it'll also help us see beyond the hype. So next time we have, we read about an article, we can connect it with the biology and we can ask, is this realistic?

• 46:02Speaker 03

  How long do I think this will take? And what are the actual prospects? So I think there are a lot of reasons to try to understand that. Besides, aging and death is something we've wondered about for centuries, for ever, for millions of years, probably. And right now, we're in a position to understand some of the actual reasons why this happens. Why does it happen at this rate to us and a different rate to whales and to butterflies? I think all of those are interesting questions in their own right. And we, as humans, have been wondering about aging and death all of our existence.

• 46:46Speaker 03

  So now that biology has made advances and actually has some light to shed on these problems, I think it's an interesting thing.

• 46:59Mike Carruthers?

  Well, this is probably way outside the bounds of this conversation. But, but you know, after we lick the whole longevity thing, then what about bringing people back?

• 47:10Speaker 03

  I think bringing somebody back who's already died is currently in the realm of science fiction. It's, I know there are companies that freeze bodies, some of them even just freeze brains. But there's absolutely no evidence that any of those bodies or brains can be resuscitated, even in principle. Nobody has shown that even for a tiny. Well, even for an animal like a mouse, they haven't been able to freeze a mouse and bring a mouse back. They have done it for very small animals like worms, tiny worms, and they do it for cells all the time. We freeze cells all the time. That's been used

• 47:54Speaker 03

  even in animal husbandry. But freezing even a small animal has not yet been done.

• 48:06Mike Carruthers?

  Well, this is something people talk about all the time about how, you know, they want to live a long time, but they don't want to live and not be healthy and be sick and be miserable. And, you know, and this really elevates that conversation. I've been speaking with Nobel Prize winning molecular biologist Venky Ramakrishnan, and he is author of the book, Why We Die. There's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Venky. Thank you for coming on and explaining this.

• 48:33Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 48:37Mike Carruthers?

  The next time you step outside today, or tomorrow, or whenever, take a moment and listen for the birds who are singing and chirping. There is scientific evidence that we can enhance our sense of well-being, clarity, and focus just by paying attention to those bird sounds. The speed and register of bird calls correlate to the frequency of our theta brainwaves, apparently. Those are our natural energizers. Bird songs have also been found to make people feel less crowded in crowded situations and make unnatural sounds like traffic noise more tolerable, all from listening to the birds. And that

• 49:21Mike Carruthers?

  is something you should know. If you've enjoyed this episode of Something You Should Know, I hope you will share it with someone else. They would appreciate it. I would appreciate it, and it would make you look like a hero. I'm Michael Rathers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 49:39Speaker 06

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• 50:09Speaker 05

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