Pod Insights Short Wave Science Says Quitting Smoking At Any Age Is Good For The Brain About this episode The rate of smoking cigarettes has steadily declined since the 1960s – when Congress required warnings on cigarette boxes. Research shows that people are more likely to try to quit smoking when they’re under 40. But a new study in the journal The Lancet Healthy Longevity https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanhl/article/PIIS2666-7568%2825%2900072-8/fulltext shows that quitting later in life can still be beneficial – and could possibly lower your risk for dementia. For this and more news from the science journals, Short Wave hosts Regina G. Barber https://www.npr.org/people/1082526815/regina-g-barber and Emily Kwong https://www.npr.org/people/767284140/emily-kwong talk with All Things Considered host Mary Louise Kelly https://www.npr.org/people/2780701/mary-louise-kelly.
Interested in knowing more about science behind the headlines? Email us your question at [email protected] mailto:[email protected] .
Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave http://plus.npr.org/shortwave.
See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This message comes from the Southern Environmental Law Center. No one voted for dirty air and water. That's why S E L C is fighting back to defend the healthy environment everyone depends on. Because it's not political, it's fundamental. Learn more at S E L C dot org.
0:18 Speaker 00 You're listening to Short Wave from NPR.
0:22 Regina Barber? Hey, Short Wavers. Regina Barber here.
0:24 Emily Kwong? And Emily Kwong.
0:25 Regina Barber? With our biweekly science news roundup, this time featuring, and this is what I always say because it's true, the legendary Mary Louise Kelly. Of all things considered, welcome to the show again.
0:36 Speaker 03 I'm delighted to be here. I will try to live up to that billing. Okay, I hear we're going to be talking about why quitting smoking at any age is good for you.
0:44 Regina Barber? That's right.
0:45 Emily Kwong? You hear that, Dad?
0:45 Regina Barber? It's important.
0:46 Emily Kwong? Did you hear that? Okay. And we're also going to talk about a new way to support the language development of preterm babies.
0:52 Regina Barber? Plus, an urban animal mystery.
0:54 Speaker 03 Animal whodunit. All right, let's go.
0:56 Emily Kwong? You're listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.
1:08 Speaker 00 Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Subaru. Discover the 2027 Subaru Crosstrek Hybrid. With up to 630 miles per tank, this Subaru Crosstrek Hybrid delivers up to 50% better city MPG, along with increased horsepower, with standard symmetrical all-wheel drive and 8.7 inches of ground clearance. Equipped with a standard 11.6-inch multimedia navigation system touchscreen, it keeps your trip on track. Their most fuel-efficient, lowest-emission Subaru Crosstrek. Adventure on the edge.
1:42 Speaker 04 This message comes from Edward Jones. Where they believe rich isn't about having life all figured out, it's opening yourself to all the possibilities. That's why your dedicated financial advisor provides long-term planning built around you, meeting you where you are and helping you get closer to where you want to be. So no matter where you're starting from, or wherever life takes you, you can move forward with confidence. The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones. Member SIPC.
2:15 Speaker 05 This message comes from Granger. For the ones who get it done, Granger offers the professional-grade products you need to get the job done. With fast delivery and access to technical product experts ready to help you meet any challenge. Call, click Granger.com, or just stop by.
2:33 Speaker 03 Okay, let's start with smoking and memory. I didn't know there was a link. Gina kicks off.
2:39 Regina Barber? Yeah, so the rate of smoking cigarettes has declined since the 1960s. That's when Congress required warnings on cigarette boxes. And researchers have found that people are more likely to try to quit smoking when they're under 40.
2:51 Emily Kwong? However, a new study in the Lancet Health Longevity Journal shows quitting later in life can still be beneficial, and it could possibly lower your risk for dementia.
3:00 Speaker 03 And that's the interesting thing. I didn't realize there was a link between our brains, our memory, and smoking.
3:06 Regina Barber? Yeah, yeah, so for that, we spoke to Michaela Bloomberg, an epidemiologist and lead author of the study. And Michaela said that smoking can damage small blood vessels in the brain. That can restrict oxygen flow, which can affect cognitive decline and lead to possible strokes.
3:21 Speaker 03 And was her study looking at the question of even if you quit well into adulthood, it's still beneficial?
3:27 Regina Barber? Yeah, Michaela and her team looked at survey data of over 9,000 smokers from 12 different countries for almost two decades. Half of them quit smoking, and the other half continued. And the survey included cognitive test participants took over the years. And what the results showed is that people who quit smoking in middle age or even older age scored better than those who never quit.
3:47 Speaker 03 So even quitting later in life, it can help your brain? And I guess there's been research showing that quitting smoking can be beneficial for other parts of your health as well, even later in life.
3:58 Emily Kwong? Yes, yeah, quitting smoking is better for your heart health later in life. A study in 2024 showed that even quitting around the age of 75 can extend life expectancy and reduce your risk of heart disease.
4:10 Regina Barber? And so, Michaela, she wasn't surprised that quitting smoking would help the brain, too? What's good for your heart is good for your brain. So it's not an overly surprising result, but it's surprising in that we didn't see that the effect kind of weakened with age. Meaning quitting at any age seems to show a benefit. Now, Michaela points out that the study can't definitively say good cognitive scores mean, like, a lower risk of dementia. But I talked to a physician who didn't work on the study, Neil Benowitz, and he's very optimistic about the findings, saying that cognitive tests are good predictors of dementia later on.
4:45 Speaker 03 Topic two, the far other extreme end of life. Tell me about language development in premature babies.
4:53 Emily Kwong? Yeah, so a full pregnancy term is about 40 weeks. And in the womb, a lot happens. And hearing develops very early. The fetal auditory system actually starts to become functional at 24 weeks.
5:05 Regina Barber? And as the weeks go by, the fetus can hear the sounds of the person carrying them. Here's how Melissa Scala put it. She's at Lucille Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford.
5:14 Speaker 03 You can hear mom talking all day long, right? Because they're sort of a captive audience. Totally a captive audience. You're stuck in your mom's tone the whole day long. I mean, that's true of all babies. Is there something distinct here about premies?
5:29 Regina Barber? Yeah, so preemie babies, those are born before 37 weeks. They're at a higher risk for delays in language development. Among very preterm babies, up to one third can have problems with reading or speaking later on.
5:41 Emily Kwong? And scientists suspect that one of the reasons may be that because premies come out earlier, they're in the NICU and not getting to constantly eavesdrop on the sounds of speech like they would in the womb. The NICU sounds nothing like the womb. And parents do visit, right, to do skin to skin contact? But they can't be in the NICU around the clock.
5:59 Regina Barber? So Melissa and her colleagues tried an intervention using sound.
6:02 Speaker 03 Sound. As a sound person, as a radio person, I'm totally intrigued. What kind of sound?
6:07 Emily Kwong? They played a recording of their moms reading the book Paddington Bear.
6:10 Speaker 03 Oh.
6:11 Emily Kwong? Yeah.
6:11 Regina Barber? I know.
6:12 Emily Kwong? For 160 minutes every night. Forty-six premies already in the hospital's care were signed up for this. Some got this intervention, some did it. The book starts, "Mr. and Mrs. Brown first met Paddington on a railway platform."
6:24 Speaker 03 I love this. I want to listen to my mom for 160 minutes. I hate reading me Paddington Bear. How did, how did the preemie babies react? How did it affect their language development?
6:36 Regina Barber? Yeah, so it did help, like, compared to the control group, who didn't get the recordings. The babies in the intervention group had more mature white matter in key language areas of the brain. And the researchers published these results in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience this week.
6:51 Emily Kwong? Now, scientists don't know the effect of this intervention long term. The study wasn't designed for that. It was a small cohort, just 46 babies. So Melissa says the plan is to repeat this intervention with a larger cohort of children. Who are even more premature and with whom the hospital can follow up in a year, in two years to see how their language develops.
7:09 Regina Barber? And research like this has changed preemie care at the hospital. They now give all preemie parents free books to read and the chance to record their voices.
7:18 Speaker 03 I've got to think that's beneficial for the parents, too. That's a whole nother study we need to do. Okay, last one, let's wrap up the urban animal mystery.
7:27 Emily Kwong? Yes, I'm so excited about this. Okay, Mary Louise, do you remember the 2024 viral sensation, the Chicago rat hole?
7:35 Speaker 03 I'm so happy to tell you I do not.
7:38 Emily Kwong? You're living life offline. We love that for you. Okay, all right. So you know when someone makes a handprint in wet concrete, it hardens into a shape?
7:45 Speaker 03 Yeah.
7:45 Emily Kwong? Picture a Chicago sidewalk where there's a whole imprint shaped kind of like a rat.
7:50 Speaker 03 Big.
7:50 Emily Kwong? That's what it is. Comedian Winslow Domain posted about visiting this so-called rat hole on social media, and people started flocking to it, leaving offerings, and there was even a wedding.
8:01 Speaker 06 We are gathered here today to marry man and man in front of the honorable Chicago rat hole.
8:14 Regina Barber? And all this caught the attention of zoologist Michael Granatowski at the University of Tennessee. He studies how animals evolve their movements, and in his scientific opinion.
8:23 Speaker 07 It looks a whole lot like a rat, and so it's a good guess.
8:26 Speaker 03 A good guess, was it the right guess?
8:29 Regina Barber? Well, that's where this mystery comes in, right? Like, Michael was seen post on social media where people were guessing it could be a squirrel because it was next to a tree, and he thought.
8:40 Speaker 07 What a great way to actually try and show the public that, you know, all of us are doing science when we take guesses.
8:48 Emily Kwong? So Michael's team decided to turn this event into a research project. Who done it?
8:52 Speaker 03 Which is blowing my mind because I'm thinking, how do you scientifically prove that this was a rat that she imprinted in the Chicago cement?
9:00 Regina Barber? Right, science is amazing, right? So they collected pictures of the rat hole from the internet since the actual imprint was actually removed last year. And using these pictures, they took a bunch of like body measurements, and they compared these measurements to taxidermied animals from the American Museum of Natural History, from rats and squirrels to mice and muskrats. And they ran a bunch of statistics and they found.
9:22 Speaker 07 It is not a rat. It's definitely not a rat.
9:25 Emily Kwong? It was a squirrel.
9:26 Speaker 03 A squirrel?
9:26 Emily Kwong? Yeah, Chicago squirrel hole.
9:31 Speaker 03 What are we supposed to take away from this? This mystery solved?
9:34 Regina Barber? What are we supposed to take away? Yeah, there is science. There's something to take away here. So other scientists we talked to say it's like a really clever way of highlighting how science is done. And Michael hopes it will encourage more people to explore the natural world.
9:46 Speaker 03 Explore the natural world, as we'd love to do.
9:49 Regina Barber? Yes. And we love when you come on the show. It's true.
9:52 Speaker 03 Oh, I love it. I'll come back anytime.
9:57 Regina Barber? You can hear more of Mary Louise Kelly on Consider This and NPR's afternoon podcast about what the news means for you. This episode was produced by Kai McNamee and Burleigh McCoy. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez and Christopher Antalyada. Tyler Jones checked the facts. The audio engineer was Simon Laszlo Jansen. I'm Emily Kwong. And I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.
10:28 Speaker 00 Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.
Previous What Happens When You're Under Anesthesia? Next Should Scientists Genetically Engineer Wild Species? Page updated November 1, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated