The Future Of Aging

 

Listen to all eight episodes via Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts.

Carl Zimmer hosts the latest season of “The World As You’ll Know It,” a podcast about the future of science and technology. Across seven episodes, he explores the science of aging–how we’ve added three decades to human life expectancy over the past century, how new discoveries about the biology of aging could lead to new ways to extend it even more, and how society needs to change to catch up with the revolution in longevity.

New episodes come out each Tuesday. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen to podcasts!

The Billion Dollar Bet: Will Humans Live to 150?

In 2000, two scientists — Steve Austad, a biologist and Jay Olshanksy, a demographer — made a bet. Would a  person live to the age of 150 by the year 2150? Austad bet yes and Olshansky bet no. They put up $150, fittingly enough. By the time the bet comes due, the wager will have increased to a billion dollars. In this episode, we revisit this twenty-five year old bet  to find both men sticking to their guns. We also  speak to  Nobel Prize winner, Venki Ramakrishnan, about new insights into what causes us to age. The episode explores the latest science around aging to expose two competing ways of understanding the human lifespan. Are we locked into a hard age limit established by centuries of data? Or could a scientific breakthrough push us far beyond it so that many of us will live decades longer? 

The Truth About Biohacking

Blood transfusions, experimental drugs and intermittent fasting are just a few of the measures so-called biohackers are taking in hopes of radically extending their lifespans. But what started as a faddish subculture has boomed into a multi-billion dollar industry – encompassing both shady claims and reputable scientific research. In this episode, we unpack the science and the hype behind some of the most prominent biohacking tools being used today, including caloric restriction, Rapamycin, and Metformin with Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan, the Nobel Prize-winning biochemist. We also speak with Dr. Daniel Belsky, the inventor of a blood test that can reveal how fast your body is aging, which could expedite testing on potentially life-extending treatment.