1 00:00:00,360 --> 00:00:02,040 Ben Southwood: Welcome to the Works in Progress podcast. 2 00:00:02,040 --> 00:00:03,150 My name is Ben Southwood. 3 00:00:03,150 --> 00:00:04,920 I'm one of the editors at Works in Progress. 4 00:00:05,160 --> 00:00:09,600 I'm here with Aria Schrecker, another one of the editors and Saloni Dattani, 5 00:00:09,600 --> 00:00:13,380 who's another one of the editors, and also runs the podcast Hard Drugs. 6 00:00:13,680 --> 00:00:17,910 Today we're gonna talk about some of the extremely long lived 7 00:00:17,910 --> 00:00:19,140 animals that exist out there. 8 00:00:19,140 --> 00:00:23,779 There are animals just out living there like lobsters and axolotls 9 00:00:24,110 --> 00:00:28,500 and naked mole-rats that can live or regenerate in surprising ways. 10 00:00:28,710 --> 00:00:32,759 And it might be possible for us as humans to learn from these animals, learn 11 00:00:32,759 --> 00:00:38,490 their secrets, and also live longer, but possibly, hopefully without having 12 00:00:38,490 --> 00:00:46,020 to be naked and bald, underground or live with a heartbeat many times slower 13 00:00:46,020 --> 00:00:48,090 than our own in extremely cold water. 14 00:00:48,510 --> 00:00:55,144 Aria, what got you onto the subject of longevous animals? 15 00:00:55,995 --> 00:01:00,825 Aria Schrecker: I want to live forever that's the starting point here. 16 00:01:01,224 --> 00:01:05,129 And there are lots of people who are spending lots of money on different 17 00:01:05,280 --> 00:01:08,740 research labs that are trying to figure out, what is a secret to 18 00:01:08,740 --> 00:01:12,525 human longevity or aging, and can we figure out a way to overcome it? 19 00:01:12,955 --> 00:01:19,755 And I think if you have some biological knowledge, I have an A-level, but if you 20 00:01:19,755 --> 00:01:23,020 are trying to figure out, okay when you're talking about all of these different 21 00:01:23,030 --> 00:01:27,870 hormones and chemicals and genes which of these actually, what do they do in the 22 00:01:27,870 --> 00:01:33,299 real world and what can we - how could they possibly be applied to human beings? 23 00:01:33,299 --> 00:01:38,330 I think the most intuitive way to get a grip with that is to see okay, there 24 00:01:38,330 --> 00:01:39,780 are some animals with these adaptations. 25 00:01:39,929 --> 00:01:43,239 There are things that are actually happening in nature and if we understand 26 00:01:43,259 --> 00:01:47,520 them, we know which of those things might then apply in people as well. 27 00:01:47,530 --> 00:01:50,300 So that's the logical reason for being interested. 28 00:01:50,440 --> 00:01:54,780 There's a fun reason, which is animals are cool, and I like to know fun 29 00:01:54,780 --> 00:01:58,589 facts about animals and this is another reason to know fun facts about animals. 30 00:01:58,740 --> 00:02:00,980 Saloni Dattani: Do you have a favorite long-lived animal? 31 00:02:01,489 --> 00:02:03,060 Or a fun fact about them? 32 00:02:03,509 --> 00:02:07,279 Aria Schrecker: I am particularly compelled by naked mole-rats. 33 00:02:07,739 --> 00:02:11,779 I think naked mole-rats are maybe the weirdest animal I've come across. 34 00:02:11,829 --> 00:02:15,644 So they're eusocial mammals, which is strange. 35 00:02:15,795 --> 00:02:16,914 Saloni Dattani: What is eusociality? 36 00:02:16,934 --> 00:02:19,454 Aria Schrecker: So they're basically creatures where each one has a 37 00:02:19,454 --> 00:02:21,894 really specialized role in its hive. 38 00:02:21,915 --> 00:02:24,915 So in ants you'll have the breeding queen, and then you'll have the 39 00:02:24,915 --> 00:02:28,605 worker drones and all kinds of that - have it with bees as well. 40 00:02:28,605 --> 00:02:29,815 And you do have it with naked mole-rats. 41 00:02:29,825 --> 00:02:33,435 So naked mole-rat colonies usually have one breeding queen 42 00:02:33,435 --> 00:02:35,475 and usually three breeding males. 43 00:02:35,785 --> 00:02:39,565 And then all of the others they're known as socially infertile as 44 00:02:39,565 --> 00:02:44,685 opposed to actually infertile, but they don't reproduce at all and you 45 00:02:44,955 --> 00:02:48,744 get weird hive-bullying behaviors where it'll be that more dominant 46 00:02:48,754 --> 00:02:53,145 females will encourage more submissive females to do work by shoving them 47 00:02:53,435 --> 00:02:55,215 and also things that about them. 48 00:02:56,405 --> 00:02:59,174 Other interesting things about naked mole-rats, they don't really 49 00:02:59,174 --> 00:03:00,369 regulate their temperature at all. 50 00:03:00,369 --> 00:03:03,865 They will at very high temperatures, they will start to have other 51 00:03:04,165 --> 00:03:07,904 physiological normal things that animals will do to cool themselves down. 52 00:03:08,144 --> 00:03:11,260 But at low temperatures, they don't warm themselves up, except again, socially, 53 00:03:11,260 --> 00:03:12,580 they warm themselves up by huddling. 54 00:03:12,860 --> 00:03:14,360 They don't seem to have any of the other- 55 00:03:14,740 --> 00:03:17,590 Saloni Dattani: Does that mean their body just works at any temperature 56 00:03:17,590 --> 00:03:20,230 or do they just happen to be in environments that are stable? 57 00:03:21,829 --> 00:03:24,239 Aria Schrecker: They're largely from very warm places in Africa, 58 00:03:24,250 --> 00:03:25,250 so it doesn't come up that much. 59 00:03:25,730 --> 00:03:29,320 But anything below 29 degrees Celsius, they'll just keep getting colder 60 00:03:29,320 --> 00:03:32,500 and they'll keep getting colder, and they'll just change the amount of 61 00:03:32,500 --> 00:03:34,170 activity they do in response to that. 62 00:03:34,990 --> 00:03:35,650 Saloni Dattani: Do they hibernate? 63 00:03:36,700 --> 00:03:37,270 Aria Schrecker: I don't know. 64 00:03:37,270 --> 00:03:37,810 I don't think so. 65 00:03:38,420 --> 00:03:40,790 I didn't read about them hibernating on their Wikipedia page, so 66 00:03:40,790 --> 00:03:43,110 I'm going to gently say no. 67 00:03:43,980 --> 00:03:46,960 Ben Southwood: So they just run at a lower clock speed when 68 00:03:46,960 --> 00:03:47,969 they're at a lower temperature. 69 00:03:48,329 --> 00:03:50,440 They just speed up when there was a higher temperature? 70 00:03:50,470 --> 00:03:50,680 Aria Schrecker: Yeah. 71 00:03:50,680 --> 00:03:51,040 It seems to be. 72 00:03:51,109 --> 00:03:51,799 Saloni Dattani: That's so fun! 73 00:03:52,350 --> 00:03:52,600 A sloth. 74 00:03:54,550 --> 00:03:56,965 Ben Southwood: So eusociality means just very, very social. 75 00:03:57,559 --> 00:04:02,355 They basically put the interests of the overall group ahead of 76 00:04:02,355 --> 00:04:03,915 their own personal interests. 77 00:04:03,955 --> 00:04:04,195 I see. 78 00:04:04,320 --> 00:04:04,590 Saloni Dattani: Got it. 79 00:04:04,620 --> 00:04:08,049 Aria Schrecker: Yeah, I feel eusocial animals, the way I think of them 80 00:04:08,049 --> 00:04:12,500 anyway, is they're one step closer to each animal as a cell and the 81 00:04:12,510 --> 00:04:16,170 entire hive or colony is the organism. 82 00:04:16,450 --> 00:04:16,610 Saloni Dattani: Right. 83 00:04:16,640 --> 00:04:18,800 Aria Schrecker: And I think they make more sense if you think about that. 84 00:04:19,175 --> 00:04:22,950 Ben Southwood: In bees and ants, that works because everyone 85 00:04:23,010 --> 00:04:24,010 is a clone of each other. 86 00:04:24,690 --> 00:04:25,039 They're effectively a clone. 87 00:04:25,659 --> 00:04:26,030 If you're 88 00:04:31,650 --> 00:04:34,919 a worker, you are basically a clone of all the other workers and you've 89 00:04:34,919 --> 00:04:36,210 also only got one chromosome- 90 00:04:36,429 --> 00:04:39,059 Aria Schrecker: I know that there are complicated genetic relationships there, 91 00:04:39,229 --> 00:04:44,309 because I know that sisters, though this is maybe a type of ant rather than a type 92 00:04:44,309 --> 00:04:47,880 of bee, but it's another type of eusocial creature where the sisters are, because I 93 00:04:47,880 --> 00:04:51,780 think of their, they don't have complete chromosomes are more related to each 94 00:04:51,780 --> 00:04:54,119 other than they are to their own children. 95 00:04:54,260 --> 00:04:57,689 Where they have only 50% of the DNA, whether they're 75% each other. 96 00:04:58,029 --> 00:05:02,969 And so the best reproductive strategy for them is to farm their mother 97 00:05:03,159 --> 00:05:07,530 for more siblings, through a selfish gene way of thinking about this. 98 00:05:08,070 --> 00:05:10,969 Ben Southwood: And what I was building to with that is do naked mole-rats 99 00:05:11,159 --> 00:05:14,169 also have the strange genetic thing or are they more like us? 100 00:05:14,520 --> 00:05:15,239 Aria Schrecker: I don't think so. 101 00:05:15,239 --> 00:05:15,940 They're more like us. 102 00:05:17,219 --> 00:05:18,059 Saloni Dattani: Do they live long? 103 00:05:19,345 --> 00:05:19,575 Aria Schrecker: So 104 00:05:21,840 --> 00:05:23,359 they live weirdly long for a rodent. 105 00:05:23,359 --> 00:05:24,029 They're the longest lived 106 00:05:26,349 --> 00:05:31,080 rodents but it seems their environment is actually quite dangerous. 107 00:05:31,099 --> 00:05:32,599 Saloni Dattani: What eats a naked mole-rat? 108 00:05:34,320 --> 00:05:35,310 Aria Schrecker: Snakes mostly. 109 00:05:35,400 --> 00:05:36,480 Saloni Dattani: Oh, that's sad. 110 00:05:37,250 --> 00:05:42,200 Aria Schrecker: But in captivity I don't think - in captivity, a naked mole-rat 111 00:05:42,270 --> 00:05:44,110 has never died of anything that is age. 112 00:05:45,550 --> 00:05:47,460 They just seem to keep going and keep going. 113 00:05:47,460 --> 00:05:50,280 So I think the oldest one in captivity is now in its forties, 114 00:05:50,880 --> 00:05:53,310 and everything seems okay. 115 00:05:53,965 --> 00:05:58,999 Saloni Dattani: I read a study that contradicted the general trend even though 116 00:05:58,999 --> 00:06:05,150 it seems some of them live really long, and I think the disagreement was basically 117 00:06:06,180 --> 00:06:11,250 that the people who studied how long naked mole-rats live only looked at those 118 00:06:11,250 --> 00:06:13,350 that had already survived to a given age. 119 00:06:13,755 --> 00:06:15,395 Then after that they didn't have that many. 120 00:06:15,405 --> 00:06:18,555 They were like let's look at naked mole-rats who have lived to this 121 00:06:18,555 --> 00:06:23,204 age, or were born after that and look at their mortality rates 122 00:06:23,965 --> 00:06:24,754 Aria Schrecker: in that sample. 123 00:06:24,764 --> 00:06:29,715 So the conventional opinion, I think, is that naked mole-rats - for most 124 00:06:29,715 --> 00:06:33,114 creatures, each year that they live, their odds of dying go up and they go up. 125 00:06:33,114 --> 00:06:36,164 So usually your safest age is your first reproductive years. 126 00:06:36,335 --> 00:06:40,005 So I don't know, it varies so much from animal to animal - like one, it 127 00:06:40,005 --> 00:06:41,455 would be about that for naked mole-rat. 128 00:06:41,724 --> 00:06:44,794 And then each year your risk of dying goes up and up and up and up and up and up. 129 00:06:44,794 --> 00:06:46,185 So you have fewer and fewer older ones. 130 00:06:46,425 --> 00:06:49,485 But I think the conventional opinion is for naked mole-rats, they're odds 131 00:06:49,485 --> 00:06:51,995 of dying are stable over each year. 132 00:06:52,015 --> 00:06:55,275 You are saying that that is only true for the naked mole-rats 133 00:06:55,635 --> 00:06:57,435 that made it to a certain age. 134 00:06:57,935 --> 00:07:00,395 Saloni Dattani: I'm saying that it's not true, and that it seemed like 135 00:07:00,395 --> 00:07:04,185 it was true because people were only looking at a very selected sample. 136 00:07:04,474 --> 00:07:04,864 Aria Schrecker: Okay. 137 00:07:05,284 --> 00:07:08,250 But it's not that the very selected sample is just the older naked mole-rats? 138 00:07:08,270 --> 00:07:08,479 Saloni Dattani: Yeah. 139 00:07:09,510 --> 00:07:12,649 Ben Southwood: So naked mole-rats, we're not sure if it's actually true that 140 00:07:12,649 --> 00:07:14,449 they live very long, but they might do. 141 00:07:14,489 --> 00:07:15,149 Saloni Dattani: But some of them do. 142 00:07:15,219 --> 00:07:15,429 Yeah. 143 00:07:15,569 --> 00:07:19,379 Ben Southwood: But some of them do, and the potential to live very long is very 144 00:07:19,379 --> 00:07:21,809 interesting to us anyway, because it might just be that we can just get those 145 00:07:21,809 --> 00:07:23,889 naked mole-rats and learn from them. 146 00:07:25,520 --> 00:07:28,830 I think we need to categorize the kinds of different long lived animals 147 00:07:28,830 --> 00:07:31,369 because I think you've got quite a lot of long lived animals that can 148 00:07:31,369 --> 00:07:34,270 go through, and I think there are multiple different categories right? 149 00:07:34,910 --> 00:07:36,450 So naked mole-rats, what category are they? 150 00:07:37,210 --> 00:07:38,760 Aria Schrecker: I think they basically standalone. 151 00:07:38,760 --> 00:07:42,710 There is another eusocial rat that I think has some of its features. 152 00:07:43,830 --> 00:07:45,270 Ben Southwood: Another long-lived eusocial rat. 153 00:07:45,909 --> 00:07:46,489 Aria Schrecker: I'm not sure. 154 00:07:46,739 --> 00:07:47,039 Ben Southwood: Okay. 155 00:07:47,319 --> 00:07:49,979 Well, I'm thinking, of the long lived creatures, some of which you're 156 00:07:50,069 --> 00:07:54,419 gonna tell us about, I imagine they fall into categories of why they're 157 00:07:54,419 --> 00:07:57,510 long lived or maybe they're all long lived for the same reason, but if 158 00:07:57,510 --> 00:08:00,359 they fall into categories, I would love you to give us those categories. 159 00:08:00,390 --> 00:08:03,299 Aria Schrecker: So I think naked mole-rats are probably a subset of 160 00:08:03,299 --> 00:08:09,444 what I'm gonna call the group that we are part of which is highly social 161 00:08:10,714 --> 00:08:17,505 mammals with interesting cancer adaptations and maybe slower metabolisms. 162 00:08:17,505 --> 00:08:21,344 But that's not necessarily the massive part of the reason for their longevity. 163 00:08:22,244 --> 00:08:25,425 Ben Southwood: So we don't have a core reason because I guess you're about 164 00:08:25,425 --> 00:08:28,784 to tell me that some animals live long because they have a very slow metabolism. 165 00:08:28,844 --> 00:08:29,115 Aria Schrecker: Yes. 166 00:08:29,115 --> 00:08:30,065 I'm about to tell you that. 167 00:08:30,065 --> 00:08:30,984 That's a core category. 168 00:08:31,585 --> 00:08:34,985 Ben Southwood: And then you might tell me another category is that others just 169 00:08:34,985 --> 00:08:36,464 don't get diseases for some reason. 170 00:08:36,885 --> 00:08:38,924 Aria Schrecker: That's not a category, but it would be a nice category to exist. 171 00:08:39,124 --> 00:08:39,795 Ben Southwood: What are the other categories? 172 00:08:39,795 --> 00:08:40,865 Aria Schrecker: Other, I'll tell you the other categories. 173 00:08:41,355 --> 00:08:41,444 Okay. 174 00:08:41,444 --> 00:08:46,324 So category number one, this is probably just one kind of creature, but it 175 00:08:46,324 --> 00:08:49,575 definitely is distinct from the others, which is that it can go back to its 176 00:08:49,575 --> 00:08:51,915 embryonic stage and then respawn again. 177 00:08:52,605 --> 00:08:54,555 So that's it's a particular kind of jellyfish, which I'm actually 178 00:08:54,555 --> 00:08:57,464 not gonna attempt the pronunciation of because I've never looked it 179 00:08:57,464 --> 00:09:00,204 up it's a Latin word, you know? 180 00:09:01,335 --> 00:09:05,160 And so basically them, and I think maybe one of their cousins that is slightly 181 00:09:05,170 --> 00:09:10,420 less common can, under extreme stress, they can go back to their embryonic or 182 00:09:10,730 --> 00:09:13,180 polyp stage, which is very, very durable. 183 00:09:13,390 --> 00:09:17,310 And then it can wait out whatever the whatever the problem is and come back. 184 00:09:17,310 --> 00:09:20,490 The problem is usually that the water's really polluted, it's too hot, it's 185 00:09:20,490 --> 00:09:26,689 too cold, I think sometimes blunt force trauma can also get it to do this. 186 00:09:26,689 --> 00:09:28,700 But also that can also kill them because they're tiny. 187 00:09:28,720 --> 00:09:30,460 Saloni Dattani: Right, that could go either way. 188 00:09:32,940 --> 00:09:34,770 Aria Schrecker: But yeah, and then basically after that point they 189 00:09:34,770 --> 00:09:40,339 can then respawn again, so it's unclear if they even have memories. 190 00:09:40,969 --> 00:09:44,410 They can respond to electric shocks and maybe learn that those 191 00:09:44,410 --> 00:09:50,475 electric shocks are bad, but that is even now a little bit suspect. 192 00:09:50,485 --> 00:09:55,040 So maybe that's longevity and maybe it's just a system spinning up and down. 193 00:09:56,010 --> 00:10:00,139 There's another adaptation, which lobsters are the core kind, but I think 194 00:10:00,359 --> 00:10:03,530 axolotls are also maybe sort of like this, which is they seem to have really, 195 00:10:03,530 --> 00:10:10,485 really good regeneration properties, and so with a lobster, you can cut off 196 00:10:10,545 --> 00:10:13,179 bits of a lobster and it'll regrow you can definitely do that with axolotls. 197 00:10:14,149 --> 00:10:17,219 You can do that with some forms of worm as well, lobsters are the 198 00:10:17,219 --> 00:10:20,740 only ones that then use that to have really, really long lifespans. 199 00:10:20,770 --> 00:10:23,650 Lobsters are bizarrely long lived for the kind of creature that they are. 200 00:10:24,760 --> 00:10:25,369 Saloni Dattani: How long do they live? 201 00:10:25,470 --> 00:10:27,829 Aria Schrecker: So the oldest known lobsters are hundreds of years old. 202 00:10:28,409 --> 00:10:29,939 Over 200 years old, probably. 203 00:10:29,960 --> 00:10:31,250 Definitely late hundreds. 204 00:10:31,829 --> 00:10:32,589 Saloni Dattani: How do we know that? 205 00:10:32,855 --> 00:10:34,585 Do they have, I don't know, markers or something? 206 00:10:34,775 --> 00:10:36,305 Aria Schrecker: That is a really good question. 207 00:10:36,385 --> 00:10:37,770 Ben Southwood: We've got a really good story. 208 00:10:38,200 --> 00:10:39,750 I've heard this one, Aria told me this one before. 209 00:10:39,810 --> 00:10:42,540 We've got a really good story about how we know the age of another creature. 210 00:10:44,284 --> 00:10:44,639 Saloni Dattani: I think I've read that one. 211 00:10:44,640 --> 00:10:44,819 Ben Southwood: One. 212 00:10:44,819 --> 00:10:48,630 I'm not gonna spoiler that one, but the lobster one I think we 213 00:10:48,640 --> 00:10:50,310 Saloni Dattani: I think we carbon date them or something like that. 214 00:10:50,360 --> 00:10:52,919 Ben Southwood: And we've got a good story about how the lobster, 215 00:10:52,919 --> 00:10:54,300 the oldest lived lobster died. 216 00:10:54,300 --> 00:10:54,389 Yes. 217 00:10:54,839 --> 00:10:55,109 Aria Schrecker: Yeah. 218 00:10:55,109 --> 00:10:56,520 The oldest lobster that we ever found. 219 00:10:56,520 --> 00:10:59,559 So basically, I wouldn't be surprised if it literally is just lobsters 220 00:10:59,559 --> 00:11:00,750 grow and they never stop growing. 221 00:11:00,750 --> 00:11:02,429 They get bigger and bigger and bigger over their lives. 222 00:11:02,429 --> 00:11:05,050 So you just find a really big one, and then you can map roughly, which 223 00:11:05,050 --> 00:11:08,159 might be why some of the oldest living is a little bit of a suspect number. 224 00:11:08,839 --> 00:11:11,689 Because it's okay, we can map that assuming that this didn't grow 225 00:11:11,709 --> 00:11:13,379 really, really quickly, it's this old. 226 00:11:13,409 --> 00:11:13,569 Saloni Dattani: Yep. 227 00:11:13,929 --> 00:11:16,780 Aria Schrecker: But yeah, so the oldest lobster that we ever found was 228 00:11:16,780 --> 00:11:23,280 caught just by a shipping people and it wound up in a lobster restaurant. 229 00:11:23,580 --> 00:11:25,110 And I guess the people at the restaurant were like, this 230 00:11:25,110 --> 00:11:26,920 is a bizarrely large lobster. 231 00:11:27,160 --> 00:11:34,860 So they kept him on display as a mascot but then PETA, the charity, PETA, did 232 00:11:34,860 --> 00:11:36,849 a campaign that was like you've gotta release him, you've gotta release the 233 00:11:36,849 --> 00:11:38,389 oldest lobster back into the wild. 234 00:11:38,609 --> 00:11:41,920 And probably he was just released into the wild starved to death 235 00:11:41,920 --> 00:11:46,540 because the problem with lobsters is they don't die the normal way. 236 00:11:46,540 --> 00:11:49,250 They don't get more and more diseases as they get older. 237 00:11:49,450 --> 00:11:53,440 They just at some point they need to shed their shell and regrow it and 238 00:11:53,440 --> 00:11:56,690 the bigger they get, the harder it is for them to eat enough calories 239 00:11:56,690 --> 00:11:58,260 in order to energetically do that. 240 00:11:58,560 --> 00:12:01,660 So when lobsters die of old age, they starve to death basically. 241 00:12:01,660 --> 00:12:02,020 Saloni Dattani: That's really sad. 242 00:12:02,349 --> 00:12:03,700 Aria Schrecker: So he's probably starved to death because 243 00:12:03,700 --> 00:12:05,050 this was 2006 or something. 244 00:12:05,655 --> 00:12:08,835 Ben Southwood: So we have; category one is that we can turn ourselves 245 00:12:08,835 --> 00:12:12,745 back into an undifferentiated mass of our stem cells, and then regenerate 246 00:12:12,745 --> 00:12:14,835 ourselves, maybe isn't that good. 247 00:12:15,155 --> 00:12:18,915 It would be quite cool, but you would probably think of it as dying. 248 00:12:19,774 --> 00:12:21,885 Aria Schrecker: Well, that's a glimmer of hope in there, in that if you 249 00:12:21,885 --> 00:12:23,644 can do that with individual tissues 250 00:12:24,154 --> 00:12:26,714 that is actually very helpful. 251 00:12:26,774 --> 00:12:26,954 Saloni Dattani: Yeah. 252 00:12:27,254 --> 00:12:30,375 Ben Southwood: Segment two is regenerative abilities. 253 00:12:30,375 --> 00:12:33,635 So you can either regrow your arms, or regrow a tissue or something. 254 00:12:33,635 --> 00:12:34,225 That's category one- 255 00:12:34,314 --> 00:12:35,004 Saloni Dattani: We can regrow our liver. 256 00:12:35,454 --> 00:12:35,724 Ben Southwood: There we go. 257 00:12:36,145 --> 00:12:39,235 So we've got a bit of that, we're like a lizard, but not the tail, we got liver. 258 00:12:39,690 --> 00:12:41,784 Aria Schrecker: And the benefit of that would also be if you can 259 00:12:42,365 --> 00:12:46,724 think about it in terms of your cells, your DNA is incredibly robust 260 00:12:46,724 --> 00:12:48,524 when you keep being able to do it. 261 00:12:48,534 --> 00:12:53,645 So usually as you age, you have more and more complications in your DNA. 262 00:12:53,855 --> 00:12:57,254 Each time each cell is copying it and makes some mistakes, lobsters 263 00:12:57,254 --> 00:12:58,264 don't seem to have those mistakes. 264 00:12:58,264 --> 00:13:02,185 So if we have that great cell regeneration and everything is coming from fresh 265 00:13:02,405 --> 00:13:04,194 stem cells or blastocysts, I think. 266 00:13:05,240 --> 00:13:07,694 Ben Southwood: And we're not growing inevitably anyway, so 267 00:13:07,694 --> 00:13:08,785 that's not a big problem for us. 268 00:13:08,785 --> 00:13:11,714 We're not gonna have an issue with calories in there. 269 00:13:11,774 --> 00:13:11,984 Aria Schrecker: Yes. 270 00:13:12,155 --> 00:13:18,355 It's really obvious that if lobsters had human's ability to control the world, 271 00:13:18,555 --> 00:13:20,165 they just would stop dying, right? 272 00:13:20,204 --> 00:13:22,710 Or we'd fight or we'd finally find out another thing. 273 00:13:22,865 --> 00:13:25,260 Ben Southwood: Or if they had automatic hormones that kicked in saying, you're 274 00:13:25,260 --> 00:13:26,760 adult now, you don't need to grow anymore. 275 00:13:26,760 --> 00:13:27,849 Which is what we have, right? 276 00:13:28,829 --> 00:13:35,369 So those category one polyp stage, go back to stem cells, category two, regenerate. 277 00:13:35,790 --> 00:13:36,480 Category three? 278 00:13:36,560 --> 00:13:39,290 Aria Schrecker: Category three, and this is a very, very big category. 279 00:13:39,800 --> 00:13:40,579 Most of the creatures that you've 280 00:13:42,599 --> 00:13:47,310 heard of that you hear have weirdly long lifespans fit into this which is that they 281 00:13:47,310 --> 00:13:49,290 just have really, really slow metabolisms. 282 00:13:49,349 --> 00:13:50,209 They don't do anything. 283 00:13:51,470 --> 00:13:56,129 I think of them as creatures that have basically the same life in total that 284 00:13:56,279 --> 00:14:00,000 you would expect a species of their kind, but they just have it on slow. 285 00:14:00,270 --> 00:14:00,540 Saloni Dattani: Right. 286 00:14:00,670 --> 00:14:02,010 So they're on slow motion. 287 00:14:02,040 --> 00:14:02,400 Aria Schrecker: Yeah. 288 00:14:02,520 --> 00:14:02,710 Yeah. 289 00:14:02,730 --> 00:14:03,310 Basically. 290 00:14:04,029 --> 00:14:04,129 Saloni Dattani: Like a sloth? 291 00:14:04,759 --> 00:14:04,780 Aria Schrecker: Yeah. 292 00:14:04,939 --> 00:14:05,419 Like a sloth. 293 00:14:06,419 --> 00:14:06,979 Ben Southwood: You're a bit preoccupied about sloths. 294 00:14:07,905 --> 00:14:09,680 Aria Schrecker: I actually, I wish I knew how long sloths 295 00:14:09,680 --> 00:14:11,719 live for, but I have no idea. 296 00:14:11,770 --> 00:14:12,670 Saloni Dattani: Isn't that a risk? 297 00:14:12,670 --> 00:14:16,629 Because what if some other animal just, I don't know, quickly killed them and 298 00:14:16,629 --> 00:14:18,220 they wouldn't be able to react fast? 299 00:14:18,430 --> 00:14:18,730 Aria Schrecker: Yeah. 300 00:14:18,730 --> 00:14:21,210 I think this probably is a problem for creatures like this. 301 00:14:21,280 --> 00:14:22,540 Ben Southwood: They're mostly quite big, right? 302 00:14:22,540 --> 00:14:23,839 Aria Schrecker: Yeah, they're mostly quite big. 303 00:14:23,839 --> 00:14:29,550 So we're thinking the Greenland shark, the Bowhead whale the 304 00:14:29,690 --> 00:14:34,079 Aldabra tortoise, and they're basically the biggest of their kind. 305 00:14:34,099 --> 00:14:37,619 So I think it's interesting that the Greenland shark and the bowhead whale 306 00:14:37,660 --> 00:14:41,349 both have this, the Greenland shark lives for much longer, but it's quite 307 00:14:41,349 --> 00:14:42,789 a bit smaller because it's a shark. 308 00:14:43,029 --> 00:14:44,359 And then the bowhead whale is massive. 309 00:14:44,629 --> 00:14:46,390 It's 70 tons, I think. 310 00:14:46,839 --> 00:14:49,899 They eat one meal a year and then they just sit in really, 311 00:14:49,899 --> 00:14:51,510 really, really cold water. 312 00:14:51,510 --> 00:14:53,079 They wait for their prey to come by them. 313 00:14:53,079 --> 00:14:53,980 They don't do anything. 314 00:14:54,069 --> 00:14:56,420 And the Greenland shark can live for about 500 years- 315 00:14:57,139 --> 00:14:57,500 Saloni Dattani: That's crazy. 316 00:14:57,520 --> 00:14:59,580 Aria Schrecker: -doing this, and probably it's the same number of 317 00:14:59,580 --> 00:15:02,815 meals that we do in that time, which is it's weird thought. 318 00:15:02,875 --> 00:15:03,485 Maybe fewer. 319 00:15:04,350 --> 00:15:06,660 Saloni Dattani: Wait, is this the one that we have the story 320 00:15:06,660 --> 00:15:07,930 about how we know how old it is? 321 00:15:08,020 --> 00:15:08,260 Aria Schrecker: No. 322 00:15:08,260 --> 00:15:11,160 So the bowhead whale is the one where we didn't realize they were super long 323 00:15:11,160 --> 00:15:15,190 lived, and then some people were, I guess illegally trying to kill the 324 00:15:15,190 --> 00:15:19,200 whale and I guess they succeeded; they were hunting it, they found it, 325 00:15:20,060 --> 00:15:21,540 again this is the early two thousands. 326 00:15:21,760 --> 00:15:26,350 And then they realize- they find a Victorian harpoon is embedded into 327 00:15:26,350 --> 00:15:28,570 the whale or a little bit of it. 328 00:15:28,790 --> 00:15:33,760 And they realize that someone had tried to kill it about a hundred years before. 329 00:15:33,940 --> 00:15:34,210 Saloni Dattani: Wow. 330 00:15:36,069 --> 00:15:39,450 Aria Schrecker: And they'd failed and they were like 'Wow, this creature's been 331 00:15:39,450 --> 00:15:42,389 swimming around for ages.' And now we think that they live for about 200 years. 332 00:15:42,700 --> 00:15:45,660 But we actually know, because they live in the coldest oceans 333 00:15:45,720 --> 00:15:49,020 and quite deep, we actually know surprisingly little about them. 334 00:15:49,170 --> 00:15:50,159 Ben Southwood: They're not exactly moving around through 335 00:15:50,159 --> 00:15:51,390 our field of vision very often. 336 00:15:51,420 --> 00:15:51,839 Aria Schrecker: Yeah. 337 00:15:51,839 --> 00:15:52,500 Ben Southwood: You've gotta find them. 338 00:15:52,680 --> 00:15:55,980 Aria Schrecker: We don't know, for example what their litter sizes are, there 339 00:15:55,980 --> 00:15:57,750 are really, really big ranges on this. 340 00:15:57,750 --> 00:16:00,089 That's the thing that for animals that don't live at the bottom 341 00:16:00,089 --> 00:16:02,880 of the ocean we obviously just immediately know this kind of thing. 342 00:16:03,160 --> 00:16:05,310 So we know yeah, we don't know very much really. 343 00:16:05,310 --> 00:16:09,145 Ben Southwood: So categories one, two, and three are; Undifferentiated polyp state, 344 00:16:09,494 --> 00:16:14,440 regenerate bits, and move very slowly and live in the cold, and be large enough that 345 00:16:14,460 --> 00:16:15,870 people don't eat you during that time. 346 00:16:16,090 --> 00:16:17,050 Aria Schrecker: Yeah, basically. 347 00:16:17,190 --> 00:16:20,819 And clams, which are technically the longest living creature, are in that 348 00:16:20,969 --> 00:16:24,810 category, they probably live for 500 years, but they literally do nothing, 349 00:16:24,810 --> 00:16:26,240 and vegans will sometimes eat them. 350 00:16:26,640 --> 00:16:26,910 Saloni Dattani: Okay. 351 00:16:27,815 --> 00:16:29,310 And are there any more categories? 352 00:16:29,310 --> 00:16:29,640 Is that it? 353 00:16:29,970 --> 00:16:32,140 Aria Schrecker: There's the final category, which I think is a bit 354 00:16:32,140 --> 00:16:35,230 more complicated because it's more- you can kind of imagine it 355 00:16:35,240 --> 00:16:36,810 is the ecological niche that it is. 356 00:16:36,860 --> 00:16:40,720 So this is the weird thing that we and naked mole-rats share, and also elephants 357 00:16:40,740 --> 00:16:44,700 share, which is that we seem to be very, very social creatures that are very 358 00:16:44,700 --> 00:16:48,040 helpful to others of our own species. 359 00:16:48,330 --> 00:16:49,190 And so therefore 360 00:16:51,520 --> 00:16:55,290 seem to live much longer than other animals that are similar to us. 361 00:16:55,530 --> 00:17:00,329 So humans live much longer than other apes and chimps and stuff. 362 00:17:00,630 --> 00:17:04,400 And apes and chimps also live much longer than other categories of mammal. 363 00:17:05,100 --> 00:17:06,130 Elephants are like this. 364 00:17:06,420 --> 00:17:12,349 And it seems the ways in which we biologically manage to do this are 365 00:17:12,790 --> 00:17:17,059 because it's convergent evolution of longevity it's not exactly the same, 366 00:17:17,090 --> 00:17:22,020 but we have some genes that we call that seem to protect us from cancer. 367 00:17:22,109 --> 00:17:22,349 Saloni Dattani: Right. 368 00:17:22,349 --> 00:17:25,200 Aria Schrecker: And we get unusually little cancer for animals of our 369 00:17:25,200 --> 00:17:29,889 size but we have two of those genes, elephants have 16 of those genes. 370 00:17:29,889 --> 00:17:31,330 Naked mole-rats have some of those genes. 371 00:17:31,590 --> 00:17:34,939 And actually some of the, obviously these categories are fuzzy, some of 372 00:17:35,009 --> 00:17:38,230 the animals with very slow metabolisms also have some of these genes as well. 373 00:17:39,330 --> 00:17:40,270 So it's things like that. 374 00:17:41,150 --> 00:17:47,100 And if you look actually over the entire animal kingdom, having a bigger brain 375 00:17:47,100 --> 00:17:50,729 and having more neurons is pretty well correlated with having a longer lifespan. 376 00:17:51,419 --> 00:17:55,819 I suspect because being a social creature probably means that you adapt 377 00:17:55,829 --> 00:18:00,399 the bigger brain but also probably means that you are better served 378 00:18:00,419 --> 00:18:04,490 by living longer, and learning from other animals and that kind of thing. 379 00:18:04,490 --> 00:18:07,739 So the bigger brain is more useful only if you have a social community and also 380 00:18:07,750 --> 00:18:10,949 a long lifespan in which to exploit that. 381 00:18:11,129 --> 00:18:13,649 So it's a complicated set of things that all seem to go together. 382 00:18:14,179 --> 00:18:17,260 Saloni Dattani: This is a question that I have, which is that, some 383 00:18:17,260 --> 00:18:20,070 of this longevity, especially in humans, isn't that because 384 00:18:20,070 --> 00:18:23,639 we've made lots of innovations that have helped us live longer? 385 00:18:24,030 --> 00:18:25,729 And I guess it's part of the thing that you're describing. 386 00:18:25,779 --> 00:18:27,419 Aria Schrecker: You will know far more about that than I do. 387 00:18:27,689 --> 00:18:31,779 I think It seems implausible to me that it's only that on the basis that 388 00:18:31,939 --> 00:18:36,600 even if you look at our natural hunter gatherer times, I still think we live a 389 00:18:36,690 --> 00:18:39,929 weird amount of time for how big we are. 390 00:18:41,209 --> 00:18:45,440 Creatures usually live longer the bigger they are, and there are - tigers 391 00:18:45,440 --> 00:18:50,179 for example are the animal that I think - tigers are bigger than us but 392 00:18:50,179 --> 00:18:54,360 they're not that much bigger than us, and a tiger life expectancy is 25 years. 393 00:18:54,809 --> 00:18:58,980 And it seems once you'd made it out of extreme childhood mortality, 394 00:18:59,159 --> 00:19:00,780 humans even as hunter gatherers were 395 00:19:03,149 --> 00:19:03,460 living longer than that. 396 00:19:03,725 --> 00:19:06,915 Ben Southwood: There's obviously a distinction as well between, when we're 397 00:19:07,080 --> 00:19:10,845 talking about longevity, what actually matters to us as people living in the 398 00:19:10,845 --> 00:19:13,534 world is how long am I likely to live? 399 00:19:13,715 --> 00:19:16,714 Which factors in a bunch of social considerations. 400 00:19:16,714 --> 00:19:20,115 Like, if I live in a country with lots of disease and poor healthcare institutions, 401 00:19:20,115 --> 00:19:22,814 I'm gonna live for a shorter period of time, it doesn't really matter to me 402 00:19:22,964 --> 00:19:28,514 that theoretical maximum limit of human lives is X. But when we're thinking about 403 00:19:28,514 --> 00:19:32,435 longevity, we're also often thinking about how long can this animal live? 404 00:19:32,725 --> 00:19:38,024 And even if you're trying really hard, I gather in captivity, you can't keep 405 00:19:38,024 --> 00:19:40,034 a tiger alive more than about 40 years. 406 00:19:40,034 --> 00:19:43,064 Something will get it, even if you're trying really, really hard. 407 00:19:43,070 --> 00:19:47,935 Whereas with humans in captivity you can keep 'em alive for 408 00:19:47,965 --> 00:19:49,784 80 years quite reliably. 409 00:19:49,784 --> 00:19:50,024 Saloni Dattani: Right. 410 00:19:50,175 --> 00:19:51,314 Ben Southwood: That's our maximum now. 411 00:19:51,584 --> 00:19:51,824 Yeah. 412 00:19:51,824 --> 00:19:52,245 90. 413 00:19:52,274 --> 00:19:56,175 Saloni Dattani: Well, in Hong Kong, the life expectancy right now is 88 years. 414 00:19:56,294 --> 00:19:56,504 Ben Southwood: Fair point. 415 00:19:56,504 --> 00:20:00,405 Saloni Dattani: Pretty high, but I guess I see these as, it's 416 00:20:00,405 --> 00:20:01,644 part of a distribution, right? 417 00:20:01,784 --> 00:20:06,615 People live different lengths of their lives, some people live much 418 00:20:06,615 --> 00:20:11,085 longer than others and we've been able to move the entire distribution. 419 00:20:11,535 --> 00:20:16,365 So on average, life expectancy has risen, but also the people who live 420 00:20:16,365 --> 00:20:20,445 the longest are living longer than before and I think there's pretty 421 00:20:20,445 --> 00:20:21,645 good evidence of both of those. 422 00:20:21,824 --> 00:20:25,264 Ben Southwood: Here's a question I have then, because I don't know the answer 423 00:20:25,264 --> 00:20:30,585 to this, my impression could easily be correct is that the actual longest ever 424 00:20:30,585 --> 00:20:34,974 life hasn't really gone up that much over the last thousand years as far as we know. 425 00:20:35,135 --> 00:20:39,174 So they thought there were people who had lived a hundred years, a thousand 426 00:20:39,174 --> 00:20:42,384 years ago and maybe they were wrong, these were all lies, and then you could 427 00:20:42,384 --> 00:20:45,314 tell me, but they thought there were some people who'd lived a hundred years 428 00:20:45,405 --> 00:20:47,055 and now we can get to a hundred years. 429 00:20:47,055 --> 00:20:49,755 Basically maybe we can get to 112 now? 430 00:20:49,855 --> 00:20:51,714 It's the actual verified maximum or whatever?. 431 00:20:51,764 --> 00:20:55,905 Saloni Dattani: So I think that it's hard to find the longest lived 432 00:20:55,905 --> 00:20:58,814 people, and that's quite hard to do historically as well because 433 00:20:58,814 --> 00:21:00,314 they had poor records and stuff. 434 00:21:00,645 --> 00:21:05,054 But if you look at people who live over a hundred years old, that fraction has 435 00:21:05,054 --> 00:21:09,195 increased over time, so there's pretty good databases where they've actually 436 00:21:09,195 --> 00:21:11,175 verified when was this person born? 437 00:21:11,774 --> 00:21:12,425 When did they die? 438 00:21:12,425 --> 00:21:16,264 And that fraction has been increasing over time and it's also, it's mostly 439 00:21:16,324 --> 00:21:21,735 women who live that long, which is very similar to how women tend to have 440 00:21:21,735 --> 00:21:23,894 longer lifespans on average than men. 441 00:21:24,374 --> 00:21:29,175 But I think that makes me think that it's just really rare to 442 00:21:29,175 --> 00:21:30,975 see people right at the extremes. 443 00:21:31,034 --> 00:21:33,584 And that means that it's hard to tell if there's been a change 444 00:21:33,584 --> 00:21:36,225 over time, even though I would guess that there probably is. 445 00:21:36,225 --> 00:21:38,895 If you can increase the number of more than a hundred year old 446 00:21:38,895 --> 00:21:42,505 people, then you probably are also increasing the longest lived people. 447 00:21:43,455 --> 00:21:48,435 Aria Schrecker: I have a question; so I hear that people basically age 448 00:21:48,445 --> 00:21:54,135 bimodally and that one subset of the population, basically by the 449 00:21:54,135 --> 00:21:57,055 time they're 60, they're starting to accumulate lots and lots of different 450 00:21:57,065 --> 00:22:02,055 diseases, and they'll get diabetes or whatever, they'll stack and they'll 451 00:22:02,055 --> 00:22:05,625 stack and they'll have several decades of accumulating these problems until one 452 00:22:06,155 --> 00:22:07,450 of their problems eventually kills them. 453 00:22:07,999 --> 00:22:12,140 And that the other subset of people basically live totally healthily until 454 00:22:12,140 --> 00:22:14,659 they're in their nineties and then suddenly something will kill them. 455 00:22:14,929 --> 00:22:17,600 Is that accurate or is that a massive oversimplification? 456 00:22:17,870 --> 00:22:19,470 Saloni Dattani: I haven't heard, I would guess that these 457 00:22:19,470 --> 00:22:21,240 are just extremes of a range. 458 00:22:21,379 --> 00:22:26,179 Because one thing that you do see and I think this maybe goes to the point of 459 00:22:26,399 --> 00:22:30,830 why this episode is even interesting, is that when people live longer, they 460 00:22:30,830 --> 00:22:34,280 tend to live healthier, and people who live longer tend to be healthier. 461 00:22:34,280 --> 00:22:36,110 They tend to get diseases later as well. 462 00:22:36,169 --> 00:22:37,100 Aria Schrecker: If you die at 90. 463 00:22:37,100 --> 00:22:42,050 Do you still spend 10 years before you are 90 with loads of chronic problems? 464 00:22:42,409 --> 00:22:46,120 If you die at 60, do you also spend about 10 years like that? 465 00:22:46,550 --> 00:22:48,919 Saloni Dattani: So you start getting diseases later on. 466 00:22:48,925 --> 00:22:49,175 Aria Schrecker: Yeah. 467 00:22:49,175 --> 00:22:49,375 Okay. 468 00:22:49,399 --> 00:22:49,669 Saloni Dattani: Yeah. 469 00:22:49,669 --> 00:22:52,500 The total amount of time you spend with a disease might be different. 470 00:22:53,229 --> 00:22:58,185 But the longest lived people, people who live over a hundred years old, 471 00:22:58,485 --> 00:23:03,584 and there's this big study in Sweden, I think that looks at this, they tend 472 00:23:03,584 --> 00:23:07,185 to have developed cancer much later than other people who died earlier. 473 00:23:07,245 --> 00:23:11,420 Ben Southwood: So would you say then, so I've heard lots of times, lots 474 00:23:11,420 --> 00:23:17,115 of people have made the case to me that basically we're just dragging 475 00:23:17,145 --> 00:23:18,554 the end of people's lives out, right? 476 00:23:18,564 --> 00:23:24,675 So we hit the ability to get to 80 years for whatever reason at some 477 00:23:24,675 --> 00:23:29,995 point in the past, and then now we just add on extra years of being ill. 478 00:23:30,425 --> 00:23:36,249 So health span doesn't go up much at all, we just drag out people being demented 479 00:23:36,259 --> 00:23:39,780 and having cancer in hospital, but we just, we keep whacking the little 480 00:23:39,780 --> 00:23:41,310 moles to keep them just about alive. 481 00:23:41,310 --> 00:23:44,399 Saloni Dattani: I think this is the common perception, and I think this is why people 482 00:23:44,399 --> 00:23:47,440 are skeptical of attempts to live longer. 483 00:23:47,470 --> 00:23:51,470 They just think I don't wanna live longer because I'll just have more 484 00:23:51,470 --> 00:23:53,480 unhealthy years at the end of my life. 485 00:23:53,500 --> 00:23:54,850 But I don't think that's true. 486 00:23:55,080 --> 00:23:59,689 So I think that as I said, people who live longer tend to live healthier lives. 487 00:24:00,219 --> 00:24:03,260 There are a few exceptions to that, we haven't made that much progress 488 00:24:03,290 --> 00:24:05,250 on Alzheimer's disease for example. 489 00:24:05,490 --> 00:24:08,790 And that, you know, if you get at a certain point, you're gonna live with that 490 00:24:08,790 --> 00:24:11,900 for how many ever last years you have. 491 00:24:12,240 --> 00:24:12,990 But that could change. 492 00:24:12,990 --> 00:24:16,440 We could get a new drug that actually treats or prevents Alzheimer's and 493 00:24:16,440 --> 00:24:18,660 that would actually change the picture. 494 00:24:19,260 --> 00:24:23,620 Aria Schrecker: How much of the improving lifespans is tackling childhood mortality? 495 00:24:23,639 --> 00:24:25,020 Diseases that people get when they're young? 496 00:24:26,370 --> 00:24:28,334 Maybe it's actually really difficult to decompose that. 497 00:24:28,434 --> 00:24:30,024 Saloni Dattani: No, it's actually not. 498 00:24:30,134 --> 00:24:35,405 So what you would look at is, you would look at mortality rates across different 499 00:24:35,405 --> 00:24:39,794 age groups and how that has affected the life expectancy metric that you get. 500 00:24:40,094 --> 00:24:45,584 So in the past, most gains in life expectancy were because of 501 00:24:45,584 --> 00:24:47,024 reductions in child mortality. 502 00:24:47,294 --> 00:24:49,245 Child mortality used to be really high in the past. 503 00:24:49,245 --> 00:24:56,475 So 200 years ago, it would be about 15% of kids would in France or Western Europe 504 00:24:56,564 --> 00:24:59,674 would die in infancy, that's really high. 505 00:24:59,874 --> 00:25:00,164 And that makes up such a 506 00:25:04,025 --> 00:25:06,765 - if you think of the life expectancy metric, it's 507 00:25:06,764 --> 00:25:09,495 basically a summary of your risks of dying 508 00:25:09,495 --> 00:25:10,604 Saloni Dattani: across your lifespan. 509 00:25:10,995 --> 00:25:16,184 And if your risks at infancy are so high that massively reduces the average 510 00:25:16,184 --> 00:25:17,684 life expectancy that people have. 511 00:25:17,954 --> 00:25:20,954 And so if you're able to reduce infant or child mortality, that 512 00:25:20,954 --> 00:25:22,485 makes a massive difference. 513 00:25:22,664 --> 00:25:25,034 And that has in the past made a huge difference. 514 00:25:25,215 --> 00:25:29,024 But at a certain point, those rates are already so low that reducing 515 00:25:29,024 --> 00:25:34,394 them doesn't get you very much, and so from the 20th century onwards 516 00:25:34,664 --> 00:25:38,715 in Western European countries and North America, most of the gains in 517 00:25:38,715 --> 00:25:42,644 life expectancy have actually been improvements in middle age and old age. 518 00:25:42,975 --> 00:25:48,344 So we've actually made quite a lot of improvement in reducing, let's 519 00:25:48,344 --> 00:25:54,374 say, cardiovascular disease, cancer mortality, infectious diseases especially. 520 00:25:54,674 --> 00:25:58,935 And those things have actually made a big difference since the mid 20th century. 521 00:25:59,639 --> 00:26:01,449 Aria Schrecker: No reason, you'd know these numbers off the top of your 522 00:26:01,449 --> 00:26:06,329 head, but to get an intuitive model if I made it to 18 and I made it to 523 00:26:06,329 --> 00:26:12,649 18 before the Industrial Revolution, versus I made it to 18, in the early 524 00:26:14,829 --> 00:26:15,289 20th century, right? 525 00:26:15,359 --> 00:26:20,379 How much longer, how much more likely would I expect to get into proper old age? 526 00:26:20,699 --> 00:26:24,119 Saloni Dattani: I think the gain is more than 10 years. 527 00:26:24,119 --> 00:26:30,149 So you would have, so if you look at 60 year olds, for example, 60 year olds in 528 00:26:30,149 --> 00:26:32,219 the early 20th century, I think had a 529 00:26:32,219 --> 00:26:35,339 life expectancy of another 10 years, now 530 00:26:35,339 --> 00:26:37,679 Saloni Dattani: they have a life expectancy for another 20 years. 531 00:26:38,589 --> 00:26:44,909 I think it's much bigger than that at if you're 18 but yeah, there are still 532 00:26:44,909 --> 00:26:46,589 big gains even after child mortality. 533 00:26:46,659 --> 00:26:51,189 Ben Southwood: So I think that there's a divide between - when people think 534 00:26:51,199 --> 00:26:56,489 about aging, there's a divide between people who think that maybe there is 535 00:26:56,489 --> 00:27:01,574 an underlying cause for everything, and the only valuable thing we can 536 00:27:01,574 --> 00:27:03,304 do is tackle that underlying cause. 537 00:27:03,644 --> 00:27:05,984 That's because you might think there's an underlying cause and it's 538 00:27:05,984 --> 00:27:07,014 still worth doing the other stuff. 539 00:27:07,444 --> 00:27:09,434 But the most valuable thing is to tackle this underlying cause. 540 00:27:09,644 --> 00:27:12,974 And then other people who think that there are just lots of different ways 541 00:27:12,974 --> 00:27:17,114 that your body becomes unhealthy, decrepit, and dies, and if we can 542 00:27:17,114 --> 00:27:20,934 just tackle them individually, we can have big benefits as well. 543 00:27:20,984 --> 00:27:22,214 Would you say you're in the second camp? 544 00:27:23,204 --> 00:27:26,564 Saloni Dattani: I would say so far, most of the gains have come from the second. 545 00:27:26,924 --> 00:27:30,944 I don't know if the first could also be true, maybe there is some secret 546 00:27:31,859 --> 00:27:35,189 thing that if we unlock, we can live forever or we can live much longer. 547 00:27:35,489 --> 00:27:38,249 And I can imagine that there are certain things that would help with that. 548 00:27:38,249 --> 00:27:41,879 So improving our DNA repair mechanisms, or reducing our 549 00:27:41,879 --> 00:27:43,349 metabolism or something like that. 550 00:27:44,029 --> 00:27:48,289 I could see that having very broad effects, but I don't think we've found 551 00:27:48,299 --> 00:27:52,799 that and I also think there's still a lot you could gain from just using the second 552 00:27:52,799 --> 00:27:54,599 method of just whacking all the moles. 553 00:27:54,899 --> 00:27:55,874 What about you, Aria? 554 00:27:56,459 --> 00:27:57,029 Do you have..? 555 00:27:57,149 --> 00:27:59,129 Aria Schrecker: Oh, I'm a total centrist on this issue actually. 556 00:28:00,029 --> 00:28:06,329 I think there will probably be some massive gain that we can get 557 00:28:06,329 --> 00:28:09,809 from one of the things that you can hint at with longevity research. 558 00:28:09,969 --> 00:28:12,989 Maybe cellular reprogramming or DNA repair or something like that. 559 00:28:13,229 --> 00:28:17,389 And you'll get a lot of gains on lots of things, but there'll be some, a handful 560 00:28:17,389 --> 00:28:19,499 of systems that are still held back. 561 00:28:19,710 --> 00:28:22,664 So I suspect we did that, but our skin would still age 562 00:28:22,824 --> 00:28:23,674 a whole bunch or something. 563 00:28:23,684 --> 00:28:26,804 Or our skin would age slightly more slowly because part of it's caused by the DNA 564 00:28:26,804 --> 00:28:29,975 repair, but some of it is just caused by being subjected to light or something. 565 00:28:30,545 --> 00:28:32,794 So I suspect there's a little bit of both. 566 00:28:33,124 --> 00:28:38,864 The thing that I think, I wonder if I could imagine being a problem is we 567 00:28:38,864 --> 00:28:42,104 can do loads and loads of stuff for our bodies, and lots of our brain is 568 00:28:42,274 --> 00:28:45,935 our body and stuff like that, but there is maybe a RAM problem that we hit up 569 00:28:45,935 --> 00:28:49,535 that becomes a weird, we didn't know that this would come up kind of issue. 570 00:28:49,655 --> 00:28:50,475 Saloni Dattani: Wait, what do you mean? 571 00:28:50,485 --> 00:28:52,994 So if you could increase the RAM in your brain? 572 00:28:53,044 --> 00:28:55,544 Aria Schrecker: Yeah, I don't really know how the brain works, 573 00:28:55,544 --> 00:28:58,634 but I imagine the brain works a bit like a computer and at some point 574 00:28:58,634 --> 00:29:00,734 you just run out of memory storage space 575 00:29:00,734 --> 00:29:01,184 Aria Schrecker: or something. 576 00:29:02,234 --> 00:29:04,274 Ben Southwood: I think that my memory's already going in the early 577 00:29:04,274 --> 00:29:06,094 ones to make space for the new ones. 578 00:29:06,669 --> 00:29:07,584 Aria Schrecker: I mean, that must be how it works. 579 00:29:07,584 --> 00:29:08,049 Ben Southwood: I'm not worried about that. 580 00:29:08,099 --> 00:29:09,239 Aria Schrecker: That must be how it works a bit. 581 00:29:09,299 --> 00:29:13,739 Even if you were just a simple algorithm that worked sensibly, it would obviously 582 00:29:14,009 --> 00:29:15,439 be that you can withdraw the stuff. 583 00:29:15,520 --> 00:29:16,690 It's why Anki decks work, right? 584 00:29:17,030 --> 00:29:21,300 You withdraw the stuff that you use repeatedly and that you know, 585 00:29:21,300 --> 00:29:22,939 that you use more recently, right? 586 00:29:23,079 --> 00:29:25,199 That is how you would program it if we were a computer. 587 00:29:25,779 --> 00:29:29,759 Ben Southwood: So you said maybe our skin would continue aging. 588 00:29:29,919 --> 00:29:32,699 But it seems to me one of the areas where 589 00:29:32,699 --> 00:29:35,489 Ben Southwood: we have made the most progress on aging, especially 590 00:29:35,489 --> 00:29:39,269 in recent years, and especially if you look at the extreme cases, so 591 00:29:39,599 --> 00:29:44,359 celebrities and rich people, it seems that we've made incredible progress. 592 00:29:44,660 --> 00:29:50,399 Normal people, well, people on the internet, people like me will see pictures 593 00:29:50,399 --> 00:29:53,754 every day of 'This is what a 20-year-old looked like in the 1980s.' They look 594 00:29:54,464 --> 00:29:56,494 like a 50-year-old, and it's crazy 595 00:29:57,054 --> 00:29:59,144 and so it seems to me, that might not be one 596 00:29:59,144 --> 00:30:03,764 Ben Southwood: of the areas where we're - people's hair and skin seem 597 00:30:03,764 --> 00:30:07,854 to be an area they care about a lot and maybe they are tackle-able. 598 00:30:07,874 --> 00:30:11,894 One way of looking at things is we're all doomed to aging and death unless 599 00:30:11,894 --> 00:30:13,094 we can find the secret formula. 600 00:30:13,214 --> 00:30:16,154 Another way of looking at things is we've tackled hair and skin, we've 601 00:30:16,154 --> 00:30:17,674 tackled all the diseases that we know. 602 00:30:17,784 --> 00:30:19,634 Each year we are coming up with new ways to tackle disease. 603 00:30:19,784 --> 00:30:20,634 But what else is there? 604 00:30:20,674 --> 00:30:23,455 We all our organs are still working individually sorted. 605 00:30:23,455 --> 00:30:27,224 All our problems, our list of problems that are caused by aging 606 00:30:27,554 --> 00:30:28,634 are just a list of problems. 607 00:30:28,634 --> 00:30:30,934 And if you can tackle all of them in principle, then you've kind of got the... 608 00:30:32,054 --> 00:30:35,985 Saloni Dattani: I think this is there's this key, or the disagreement 609 00:30:35,995 --> 00:30:40,994 is something about just how much risk we accumulate with age. 610 00:30:40,994 --> 00:30:47,864 So for most organisms as you age, you have an exponentially increasing risk of death. 611 00:30:48,659 --> 00:30:53,429 I think the question with longevity is, is there a way to prevent that 612 00:30:53,429 --> 00:30:54,643 from rising at all? 613 00:30:54,643 --> 00:30:56,159 What we've seen so far 614 00:30:56,159 --> 00:31:00,259 Saloni Dattani: is that it still rises, but starts out at a lower level. 615 00:31:00,479 --> 00:31:02,899 So at each age you're kind of delaying death. 616 00:31:03,389 --> 00:31:05,589 But is there a way to just prevent death entirely? 617 00:31:05,589 --> 00:31:08,939 And I think that's what people who believe this first idea, that 618 00:31:08,939 --> 00:31:10,259 there's some secret, would say. 619 00:31:11,759 --> 00:31:17,229 Ben Southwood: I think an area that would be interesting to think about is that yes, 620 00:31:17,249 --> 00:31:20,789 most of the stuff we've done on longevity is this second type we're talking about, 621 00:31:20,789 --> 00:31:22,589 which is tackling specific problems. 622 00:31:22,679 --> 00:31:22,859 Saloni Dattani: Right. 623 00:31:22,919 --> 00:31:25,979 Ben Southwood: Making it much less likely that you'll die of cancer, heart disease. 624 00:31:26,079 --> 00:31:26,199 It's crazy how if 625 00:31:28,439 --> 00:31:33,449 you watch any film, read any book, talk to your family of people who were men 626 00:31:33,449 --> 00:31:37,489 in their fifties in the 1960s and 1970s, they just died all the time, randomly, 627 00:31:37,649 --> 00:31:40,379 they'd be in the peak of life and just suddenly die from a heart attack. 628 00:31:40,419 --> 00:31:41,414 Saloni Dattani: They didn't have AEDs (Automated External Defibrillators) back 629 00:31:41,414 --> 00:31:43,799 then, they had just barely invented CPR. 630 00:31:43,919 --> 00:31:44,219 Ben Southwood: Yeah. 631 00:31:44,219 --> 00:31:46,589 They were just constantly dying of heart attacks. 632 00:31:46,649 --> 00:31:46,739 Saloni Dattani: Right. 633 00:31:46,929 --> 00:31:48,669 Ben Southwood: And now that just doesn't seem to happen. 634 00:31:48,749 --> 00:31:52,499 You would think it was really surprising and horrifying if a man in their 635 00:31:52,499 --> 00:31:54,389 fifties or sixties was killed with 636 00:31:54,629 --> 00:31:56,309 a heart attack in a normally healthy person 637 00:31:56,309 --> 00:31:57,269 Ben Southwood: without comorbidities. 638 00:31:57,899 --> 00:32:04,499 But there are some tidbits, some tidbits towards these animal solutions, 639 00:32:04,589 --> 00:32:07,009 these deeper potential solutions. 640 00:32:07,049 --> 00:32:12,089 And if you follow academic research, you'll see there are findings of 641 00:32:12,319 --> 00:32:17,504 everything all the time; ranging from green tea to any compound that exists, 642 00:32:18,214 --> 00:32:19,474 finding that they increase longevity. 643 00:32:19,714 --> 00:32:27,404 But followers of the replication crisis will know that a lot of this stuff is 644 00:32:27,404 --> 00:32:32,234 basically just dubious, and they didn't pre-register their findings, they 645 00:32:32,314 --> 00:32:34,064 p-hacked a result, blah, blah, blah, blah. 646 00:32:34,584 --> 00:32:40,284 But there is an interesting set of studies where they are using normal 647 00:32:40,284 --> 00:32:44,534 mice, doing pre-registered studies and then just going through all of the 648 00:32:44,534 --> 00:32:48,224 standard compounds that people think might extend life and trying them. 649 00:32:48,224 --> 00:32:50,074 And by the way, green tea, no result. 650 00:32:50,124 --> 00:32:55,534 No effect in their randomized control trial on mice, but my reading is 651 00:32:55,534 --> 00:32:57,374 that they have found four compounds. 652 00:32:57,404 --> 00:32:58,835 Aspirin also did not extend life. 653 00:32:59,755 --> 00:33:01,334 Four compounds that extend life in mice. 654 00:33:01,334 --> 00:33:03,804 Obviously we're not mice, but we're enough close to mice that 655 00:33:04,904 --> 00:33:05,734 maybe they have some effects. 656 00:33:05,734 --> 00:33:08,080 So I'd like to talk about these four compounds, also because 657 00:33:08,080 --> 00:33:09,029 I can't remember all of them. 658 00:33:09,509 --> 00:33:11,369 Saloni Dattani: Well, just to give the name of the thing that you 659 00:33:11,369 --> 00:33:16,649 mentioned, it's the US's National Institute of Aging's program called 660 00:33:16,649 --> 00:33:18,309 the Interventions Testing Program, 661 00:33:20,909 --> 00:33:21,149 ITP. 662 00:33:21,149 --> 00:33:24,029 And they get a bunch of different labs in different countries or 663 00:33:24,329 --> 00:33:27,459 different places to run the same tests. 664 00:33:27,469 --> 00:33:30,869 So they're testing the same compound, different types of mice, different 665 00:33:30,869 --> 00:33:35,230 labs, and they see if there are replicable results and I think 666 00:33:35,230 --> 00:33:40,859 there were four, I only remember two - rapamycin, and acarbose, I think. 667 00:33:40,859 --> 00:33:41,849 And there's something else. 668 00:33:41,849 --> 00:33:44,069 I think maybe Metformin? 669 00:33:44,069 --> 00:33:46,620 Ben Southwood: And then also one of the flozins, I think. 670 00:33:47,010 --> 00:33:47,650 Saloni Dattani: Oh yeah. 671 00:33:47,699 --> 00:33:48,219 Ben Southwood: Extended life as well. 672 00:33:48,299 --> 00:33:50,790 Saloni Dattani: One of the SGLT2 inhibitors. 673 00:33:50,879 --> 00:33:53,219 Yeah, we had a piece on SGLT2 inhibitors. 674 00:33:53,219 --> 00:33:54,239 Ben Southwood: That's the reason I know about it. 675 00:33:55,434 --> 00:33:58,829 Saloni Dattani: It was initially a kidney disease drug or maybe a diabetes- 676 00:33:58,829 --> 00:34:02,149 Ben Southwood: No no diabetes first, and then it got the kidney- 677 00:34:02,149 --> 00:34:04,569 and then it got a heart disease and the kidney disease indication. 678 00:34:04,984 --> 00:34:10,819 Saloni Dattani: Basically it removes excess blood sugar and something else from 679 00:34:10,819 --> 00:34:16,649 your urine, from your blood, and it means that you excrete more in your urine salt. 680 00:34:16,649 --> 00:34:16,920 Yes. 681 00:34:17,040 --> 00:34:21,839 Ben Southwood: So SGLT2 reuptakes sugar from your urine so that you don't 682 00:34:21,839 --> 00:34:24,519 waste calories by urinating them away. 683 00:34:25,559 --> 00:34:27,659 And SGLT2 inhibitors stop you from doing that. 684 00:34:27,689 --> 00:34:27,839 Saloni Dattani: Right. 685 00:34:28,589 --> 00:34:32,299 So you excrete more, that reduces blood pressure, reduces the pressure 686 00:34:32,299 --> 00:34:34,539 on your kidneys and heart and that 687 00:34:34,674 --> 00:34:36,239 - Ben Southwood: And reduces blood sugar so that you don't 688 00:34:36,540 --> 00:34:37,769 take as many diabetic problems. 689 00:34:37,769 --> 00:34:42,080 It's a, turns out that reducing your blood sugar has a - and it also 690 00:34:42,080 --> 00:34:43,889 extends life by about 10% in mice. 691 00:34:44,559 --> 00:34:44,779 Saloni Dattani: Right. 692 00:34:45,960 --> 00:34:47,489 Ben Southwood: On the one hand, that's great. 693 00:34:47,909 --> 00:34:52,290 That's amazing; imagine we could extend all of our lives by 10% on a drug that is 694 00:34:52,290 --> 00:34:56,540 quite simple and easy to make and will be out of patent in 10 years or something. 695 00:34:57,029 --> 00:35:03,439 On the other hand, it'll be quite disappointing if 10% is the max we can 696 00:35:03,439 --> 00:35:05,109 get out of these metabolic improvements. 697 00:35:05,290 --> 00:35:06,899 Maybe if you stack the other metabolic drugs. 698 00:35:06,899 --> 00:35:08,849 So acarbose, the other one you mentioned, right? 699 00:35:09,330 --> 00:35:12,959 It stops you from digesting carbohydrates, but you don't make amylase. 700 00:35:12,999 --> 00:35:18,409 Amylase is what digests most carbohydrates, it effectively turns 701 00:35:18,469 --> 00:35:20,740 every carbohydrate you eat into a fiber. 702 00:35:21,770 --> 00:35:25,200 So, if you are eating 200 grams of rice every 703 00:35:25,200 --> 00:35:27,200 day, you're getting 200 grams of fiber, 704 00:35:27,240 --> 00:35:31,020 Ben Southwood: five times the really high targets that people are going for. 705 00:35:31,319 --> 00:35:34,740 So one third of people withdraw from the drug for gastrointestinal 706 00:35:34,740 --> 00:35:35,549 reasons straight away. 707 00:35:35,680 --> 00:35:35,980 Saloni Dattani: Okay. 708 00:35:36,089 --> 00:35:40,839 Ben Southwood: And the other two thirds I suspect either develop machine-like 709 00:35:40,870 --> 00:35:44,979 gut bacteria systems that can churn through so much fiber so that it 710 00:35:44,979 --> 00:35:46,629 doesn't become really troubling. 711 00:35:46,639 --> 00:35:47,069 It'll be that. 712 00:35:47,490 --> 00:35:51,790 Or they just stop eating carbs altogether because you don't get any 713 00:35:51,790 --> 00:35:53,790 gastrointestinal symptoms if you do it. 714 00:35:53,820 --> 00:35:53,910 Saloni Dattani: Right. 715 00:35:53,910 --> 00:35:56,100 And they might live longer for that reason. 716 00:35:56,280 --> 00:35:56,580 Ben Southwood: Exactly. 717 00:35:56,700 --> 00:35:59,940 So I suspect that what this is finding, the fact that all of these things go in 718 00:35:59,940 --> 00:36:03,999 the same direction, is that there is a metabolic effect, we know that animals 719 00:36:04,379 --> 00:36:08,370 live longer with, when they have slow metabolisms, we know that humans live 720 00:36:08,370 --> 00:36:12,290 longer or we have reasonable evidence that humans and other species will live longer 721 00:36:12,290 --> 00:36:15,480 if you control the calories and then if you give them drugs that mimic controlling 722 00:36:15,480 --> 00:36:17,040 calories, they also live a bit longer. 723 00:36:17,240 --> 00:36:19,890 So maybe we can get 10 to 20% out of these. 724 00:36:20,010 --> 00:36:24,570 And the upside version of the drugs would be, I can take a drug but 725 00:36:24,570 --> 00:36:25,870 still eat all the food I like eating. 726 00:36:27,540 --> 00:36:29,735 Aria Schrecker: There's another clue on this as well, which is there's a 727 00:36:29,735 --> 00:36:34,440 big study of Ashkenazi Jewish people who lived to over the age of a hundred, 728 00:36:34,730 --> 00:36:41,749 and they found that a lot of them had a gene that imitated some diabetes 729 00:36:42,249 --> 00:36:46,254 outcomes as well, basically controlling their - they were just better at 730 00:36:46,254 --> 00:36:48,984 controlling their blood sugar and insulin. 731 00:36:49,814 --> 00:36:52,245 Saloni Dattani: Well also GLP-1 agonists, right? 732 00:36:52,334 --> 00:36:52,354 Yeah. 733 00:36:52,725 --> 00:36:57,560 a lot of these are about some weight loss or some diabetes you know, reduction. 734 00:36:58,299 --> 00:36:59,769 And so that seems like. 735 00:37:00,479 --> 00:37:03,855 It also just gets to the point where some of the interventions that you 736 00:37:03,855 --> 00:37:07,605 could have in your life to live longer are fairly simple things that people 737 00:37:07,605 --> 00:37:11,024 have recommended for ages and ages, which are exercise, lose weight. 738 00:37:11,634 --> 00:37:13,490 Ben Southwood: It's so distressing when you discover those things are true.. 739 00:37:14,029 --> 00:37:15,690 You're oh, damn, there aren't any secret methods. 740 00:37:15,810 --> 00:37:17,145 I just have to do all the boring stuff. 741 00:37:17,535 --> 00:37:19,665 But, and if you're already doing it, then it's particularly distressing. 742 00:37:19,815 --> 00:37:20,865 You can't improve things anymore. 743 00:37:20,895 --> 00:37:21,105 Saloni Dattani: Yeah. 744 00:37:21,270 --> 00:37:25,495 Aria Schrecker: And I think there's a study in, I think it's chimps which 745 00:37:25,565 --> 00:37:32,384 shows that if you are already calorically restricting the chimps, then the 746 00:37:32,384 --> 00:37:34,975 extra, I think it's one of the big diabetes 747 00:37:34,975 --> 00:37:35,245 Aria Schrecker: drugs. 748 00:37:35,595 --> 00:37:37,119 It doesn't really increase their lifespan at all. 749 00:37:37,279 --> 00:37:39,585 So we're just hitting the same thing. 750 00:37:39,585 --> 00:37:39,765 Saloni Dattani: Yeah. 751 00:37:40,014 --> 00:37:44,624 I would guess that you can't completely just add them all up, you can't stack 752 00:37:44,624 --> 00:37:47,595 them all up because some of them will just tackle the same pathways and once 753 00:37:47,595 --> 00:37:49,274 you've reduced that risk, it's gone. 754 00:37:49,274 --> 00:37:50,625 You don't need to worry about that anymore. 755 00:37:50,835 --> 00:37:51,075 Ben Southwood: But. 756 00:37:51,779 --> 00:37:54,209 We mentioned three drugs, all of which tackled the one pathway. 757 00:37:54,310 --> 00:37:54,430 Saloni Dattani: Yep. 758 00:37:54,540 --> 00:37:55,799 Ben Southwood: But we've got one other drug here. 759 00:37:56,069 --> 00:37:56,819 Tell us about rapamycin. 760 00:37:56,819 --> 00:38:00,240 Saloni Dattani: I don't know that much, but I know that it somehow is involved in 761 00:38:00,240 --> 00:38:02,489 DNA cell repair or something like that. 762 00:38:02,539 --> 00:38:05,390 Aria Schrecker: Yeah, so basically it tackles a part of 763 00:38:05,459 --> 00:38:06,609 your body that, as far as I can 764 00:38:06,609 --> 00:38:10,379 tell the acronym, it's mTOR, but the acronym is just target of rapamycin. 765 00:38:10,379 --> 00:38:12,290 Ben Southwood: Mechanistic target of rapamycin. 766 00:38:12,579 --> 00:38:13,979 It's oh, what does rapamycin do? 767 00:38:14,160 --> 00:38:16,520 Well, it targets the mechanistic target of rapamycin. 768 00:38:16,689 --> 00:38:18,120 It goes the mTOR pathway. 769 00:38:18,819 --> 00:38:19,120 Aria Schrecker: Yeah. 770 00:38:19,330 --> 00:38:26,185 And that seems to be involved with signaling about cell growth, and so 771 00:38:26,265 --> 00:38:29,440 rapamycin the drug - this is why I'm starting to get confused, because it 772 00:38:29,440 --> 00:38:36,029 seems there is some link between some of the different categories of animal 773 00:38:36,029 --> 00:38:40,360 that I've described that rapamycin kind of sits in the middle of. 774 00:38:40,370 --> 00:38:43,680 So it's a drug that deals with immunity and deals with cell repair. 775 00:38:43,680 --> 00:38:47,410 So if you take rapamycin, your wounds don't heal very well. 776 00:38:47,669 --> 00:38:51,319 And in large amounts, it's an immunosuppressant in people, and 777 00:38:51,599 --> 00:38:52,680 that's why we give it to people. 778 00:38:52,890 --> 00:38:55,979 But in small amounts, it seems to make your immune system 779 00:38:55,979 --> 00:38:57,450 work better, especially in 780 00:38:57,450 --> 00:39:01,100 older people, and is somehow also related 781 00:39:01,100 --> 00:39:01,910 Aria Schrecker: to your metabolism. 782 00:39:02,160 --> 00:39:03,689 And that's clearly basically we're just 783 00:39:03,689 --> 00:39:05,339 getting to the limit of how I understand that 784 00:39:05,339 --> 00:39:07,229 Aria Schrecker: cells work but it 785 00:39:07,229 --> 00:39:09,509 seems there is some relationship between 786 00:39:09,509 --> 00:39:11,620 Aria Schrecker: cell repair and your metabolism 787 00:39:13,730 --> 00:39:15,419 that exists, which is why it may not be- 788 00:39:15,419 --> 00:39:17,835 Ben Southwood: May also turn off too much growth is what you were suggesting. 789 00:39:18,105 --> 00:39:19,115 Aria Schrecker: And it may also turn off growth. 790 00:39:19,525 --> 00:39:22,154 Basically if you grow very quickly, you probably won't live very 791 00:39:22,154 --> 00:39:24,255 long, that seems to be a general rule across 792 00:39:24,255 --> 00:39:25,005 Aria Schrecker: the animal kingdom. 793 00:39:25,005 --> 00:39:28,215 And also actually within humans if you take growth hormone, it'll 794 00:39:28,215 --> 00:39:29,295 probably also decrease your lifespan. 795 00:39:29,355 --> 00:39:30,645 Saloni Dattani: Does that mean short people are-? 796 00:39:31,664 --> 00:39:32,354 Aria Schrecker: Short people live longer! 797 00:39:32,484 --> 00:39:33,555 Short people do live longer. 798 00:39:34,144 --> 00:39:34,345 Saloni Dattani: I didn't know. 799 00:39:34,575 --> 00:39:38,085 I would've guessed that it's the opposite because people who are 800 00:39:38,085 --> 00:39:39,825 taller tend to have better nutrition. 801 00:39:39,855 --> 00:39:42,395 Aria Schrecker: So I suspect that in the modern west, if 802 00:39:42,395 --> 00:39:45,165 everyone is well nourished, then smaller people do live longer. 803 00:39:46,215 --> 00:39:47,865 Saloni Dattani: So I'm gonna live longer? 804 00:39:47,935 --> 00:39:48,525 Aria Schrecker: Yeah, probably. 805 00:39:48,865 --> 00:39:49,275 Saloni Dattani: Okay, that's good. 806 00:39:49,275 --> 00:39:53,175 Aria Schrecker: And smaller dog breeds also live longer than big 807 00:39:53,175 --> 00:39:54,209 dogs as well, which is interesting. 808 00:39:54,760 --> 00:39:57,134 Ben Southwood: That's definitely observable if you know dogs. 809 00:39:57,195 --> 00:39:57,465 Aria Schrecker: Yeah. 810 00:39:57,774 --> 00:39:58,764 Saloni Dattani: That reminds me. 811 00:39:58,814 --> 00:40:03,045 I actually read this study about how domestic pets are 812 00:40:03,045 --> 00:40:04,435 living longer than in the past. 813 00:40:04,784 --> 00:40:11,055 So there's this data set of millions of domestic dogs and cats in the US, 814 00:40:11,414 --> 00:40:14,714 and over the last 10 years, they've gained one year of life expectancy. 815 00:40:14,805 --> 00:40:15,194 Ben Southwood: Wow. 816 00:40:15,825 --> 00:40:16,065 Aria Schrecker: Why? 817 00:40:17,075 --> 00:40:17,865 Better nutrition? 818 00:40:18,254 --> 00:40:20,355 Saloni Dattani: I would guess better healthcare, better medicine. 819 00:40:20,384 --> 00:40:23,234 Ben Southwood: If I had to guess, I would've thought that it was just that 820 00:40:23,424 --> 00:40:26,955 Americans have got much richer and they're spending a lot more money on 821 00:40:26,955 --> 00:40:31,694 keeping their dogs alive when they're reaching the end of their lives. 822 00:40:31,754 --> 00:40:35,385 Because usually we're a bit more utilitarian about pets 823 00:40:35,385 --> 00:40:36,705 than we are about other humans. 824 00:40:36,794 --> 00:40:36,915 Saloni Dattani: Right. 825 00:40:37,035 --> 00:40:40,544 Ben Southwood: And we decide is it worth $10,000 for an extra 826 00:40:40,544 --> 00:40:41,805 couple of years of dog life? 827 00:40:41,895 --> 00:40:45,975 I could get another dog and people, when they have enough money, they 828 00:40:45,975 --> 00:40:48,435 have the choice, the freedom to say, you know what, no, I want my dog. 829 00:40:48,435 --> 00:40:49,065 This is my dog. 830 00:40:49,065 --> 00:40:50,024 I love this particular dog. 831 00:40:50,384 --> 00:40:51,944 Not just any dog in general. 832 00:40:53,140 --> 00:40:58,470 Aria Schrecker: Also, having been a cat owner for a long while now, they 833 00:40:58,470 --> 00:41:01,010 are getting stricter about making sure that you vaccinate your cats if 834 00:41:01,010 --> 00:41:02,430 you want to do anything with them. 835 00:41:02,430 --> 00:41:04,020 So it used to be that you would, you had 836 00:41:04,020 --> 00:41:05,879 vaccinated once and then fine, it could go to 837 00:41:05,879 --> 00:41:08,310 Aria Schrecker: the kennel and it'd be okay, and now you've gotta do an 838 00:41:08,310 --> 00:41:09,899 UpToDate certificate all the time. 839 00:41:10,709 --> 00:41:13,949 You can't be lax on your cat vaccines, even if your cat doesn't go outdoors. 840 00:41:14,169 --> 00:41:15,480 So I assume there are also lots 841 00:41:15,480 --> 00:41:17,040 of structural reasons that people 842 00:41:17,040 --> 00:41:18,839 Aria Schrecker: are getting more risk averse across society 843 00:41:18,839 --> 00:41:19,649 with their pets as well. 844 00:41:19,770 --> 00:41:22,740 Saloni Dattani: That reminds me of other things that help us live longer. 845 00:41:22,740 --> 00:41:27,100 Flu vaccines actually very effective at reducing the risks 846 00:41:27,100 --> 00:41:28,470 of heart attacks and strokes. 847 00:41:28,529 --> 00:41:31,830 People don't really know this, but they reduce those by roughly 848 00:41:31,830 --> 00:41:33,180 the same amount as statins do. 849 00:41:34,169 --> 00:41:35,180 Statin's another great example. 850 00:41:35,759 --> 00:41:36,200 Ben Southwood: Yeah. 851 00:41:36,399 --> 00:41:36,649 Saloni Dattani: There are lots of things. 852 00:41:36,944 --> 00:41:40,070 Ben Southwood: The preventative ones I think appeal to people more than 853 00:41:40,070 --> 00:41:44,290 the responsive, because the preventive ones feel like you are healthier. 854 00:41:46,920 --> 00:41:47,380 What people want 855 00:41:49,850 --> 00:41:55,650 is not to age in the conception we have - I guess it's hard to put a finger on 856 00:41:55,650 --> 00:41:59,319 it because if you can not visually age, and also survive , and also stay fit, 857 00:42:01,410 --> 00:42:03,570 you know, what is it that's, what is it that's different? 858 00:42:04,249 --> 00:42:07,349 Aria Schrecker: I think you just run life on slow, basically. 859 00:42:07,470 --> 00:42:13,570 Or maybe you get more conscious moments per unit age, or something like that? 860 00:42:14,829 --> 00:42:15,840 Ben Southwood: I agree that that's what people want, but I think it's 861 00:42:15,840 --> 00:42:18,499 very hard to map our intuitions. 862 00:42:18,920 --> 00:42:22,110 I think a lot of people have the intuition that the things we have done 863 00:42:22,110 --> 00:42:24,120 so far have not slowed down aging. 864 00:42:24,669 --> 00:42:28,390 Which I think that it's very hard to justify that if you compare it to any 865 00:42:28,600 --> 00:42:30,050 possible yardstick you could have. 866 00:42:32,010 --> 00:42:33,210 Aria Schrecker: I think it's definitely slowed down 867 00:42:33,210 --> 00:42:36,660 aging; there are so many ways in which it just feels obviously true that 868 00:42:36,660 --> 00:42:36,780 Aria Schrecker: we 869 00:42:36,780 --> 00:42:39,230 are younger than other people were when 870 00:42:39,230 --> 00:42:41,400 Aria Schrecker: they were at our 'clock' age. 871 00:42:41,950 --> 00:42:42,210 Ben Southwood: Yes. 872 00:42:42,850 --> 00:42:46,890 So here's another thing people say is that we're going through 873 00:42:46,890 --> 00:42:48,660 life stages more slowly. 874 00:42:49,049 --> 00:42:51,750 Now, do you think that's related to the fact that we live longer? 875 00:42:52,109 --> 00:42:53,100 Do you think that we- 876 00:42:53,969 --> 00:42:56,179 Saloni Dattani: What exactly is the idea? 877 00:42:56,535 --> 00:42:59,100 Ben Southwood: So the claim is that people get their driving licenses 878 00:42:59,100 --> 00:43:01,619 later, they lose their virginity later. 879 00:43:01,785 --> 00:43:04,194 They spend longer in education. 880 00:43:04,439 --> 00:43:05,819 Saloni Dattani: They hit puberty later, apparently. 881 00:43:05,819 --> 00:43:10,109 Ben Southwood: Yeah, it was going down for a century and now people 882 00:43:10,109 --> 00:43:11,189 are hitting puberty later as well. 883 00:43:11,310 --> 00:43:15,810 So if that's the case, you're telling me lots of things are happening later. 884 00:43:15,870 --> 00:43:18,939 There are lots of people who, people used to do their first job when they were 14 885 00:43:18,939 --> 00:43:20,700 or they would oft be in the world of work. 886 00:43:20,759 --> 00:43:20,939 Saloni Dattani: Right. 887 00:43:21,120 --> 00:43:22,980 Ben Southwood: At 14, get married at 20. 888 00:43:22,980 --> 00:43:24,419 Aria Schrecker: People are definitely having children later. 889 00:43:25,429 --> 00:43:26,019 Ben Southwood: All of those things. 890 00:43:26,129 --> 00:43:28,109 I wonder if you think those things are related by the fact we know 891 00:43:28,109 --> 00:43:29,580 we've got longer to spread out into? 892 00:43:29,580 --> 00:43:30,209 Saloni Dattani: Oh, I see. 893 00:43:30,209 --> 00:43:33,845 So you're saying- Well, I guess there's two ways. 894 00:43:33,855 --> 00:43:37,045 There's one, we're living longer and therefore we can delay these things 895 00:43:37,045 --> 00:43:38,295 and we don't have to worry that much. 896 00:43:38,295 --> 00:43:41,475 Or is it, we're delaying these things, which helps us live longer. 897 00:43:41,804 --> 00:43:42,985 Aria Schrecker: Oh I think what Ben's 898 00:43:42,985 --> 00:43:46,685 saying is that we are biologically at younger 899 00:43:46,735 --> 00:43:47,384 Aria Schrecker: life stages. 900 00:43:47,384 --> 00:43:49,465 So mentally we are choosing to not worry. 901 00:43:49,895 --> 00:43:49,984 Ben Southwood: No. 902 00:43:50,195 --> 00:43:50,785 That's the third possible- 903 00:43:51,025 --> 00:43:51,615 Aria Schrecker: I thought that's what you were saying. 904 00:43:52,095 --> 00:43:54,295 Ben Southwood: Saloni's one is one route. 905 00:43:54,295 --> 00:43:55,875 Yours is another, and mine was the third one. 906 00:43:55,965 --> 00:43:56,295 Aria Schrecker: Okay. 907 00:43:56,295 --> 00:43:56,305 Okay. 908 00:43:56,595 --> 00:43:57,645 Saloni Dattani: So which one do you believe? 909 00:43:57,795 --> 00:43:58,695 Ben Southwood: Um, I don't know. 910 00:43:58,695 --> 00:44:01,185 I'd like to hear arguments and I'll choose the best one. 911 00:44:01,185 --> 00:44:02,105 Saloni Dattani: I don't have a view. 912 00:44:02,125 --> 00:44:03,285 Aria Schrecker: Yeah, it feels you just wouldn't know. 913 00:44:03,420 --> 00:44:04,525 Ben Southwood: They could be unrelated as well. 914 00:44:04,755 --> 00:44:08,190 So I could totally believe, I think that the baseline view 915 00:44:08,190 --> 00:44:09,285 would be that they're unrelated. 916 00:44:09,435 --> 00:44:13,484 The baseline view would be, or the view that a typical person might say 917 00:44:13,484 --> 00:44:15,695 is that we have a coddling society now. 918 00:44:16,155 --> 00:44:19,814 In a totally unrelated way to how we have done lots of medical 919 00:44:19,905 --> 00:44:21,225 interventions that make us live longer. 920 00:44:22,125 --> 00:44:25,345 Saloni Dattani: So I think there's one version of it that I actually do 921 00:44:25,345 --> 00:44:29,765 believe that you know, coddling in terms of reducing our risks of injury 922 00:44:29,765 --> 00:44:32,344 or accidents and things like that actually does make us live longer. 923 00:44:32,674 --> 00:44:35,464 Ben Southwood: Yeah, so I've totally changed my mind on this since having 924 00:44:35,464 --> 00:44:40,394 children, now that I've had children; now it may possibly be because my children are 925 00:44:40,394 --> 00:44:45,454 more danger seeking than other children, or they're a mixture of being extremely 926 00:44:45,584 --> 00:44:49,664 malcoordinated like me, or extremely brave and danger seeking like Eloise, 927 00:44:49,664 --> 00:44:55,554 my wife, and when that crosses over, you get children who go to hospital lots. 928 00:44:55,624 --> 00:44:55,734 Saloni Dattani: Right. 929 00:44:56,325 --> 00:45:01,294 Ben Southwood: But one of the things I- so there's this view that people, it's in the 930 00:45:01,294 --> 00:45:06,004 water, and also I've recited it to myself of: billions of people have had children. 931 00:45:06,154 --> 00:45:07,414 It's the most normal thing in the world. 932 00:45:07,414 --> 00:45:10,734 Keeping children alive must be very easy, you shouldn't worry about it too much. 933 00:45:11,114 --> 00:45:12,574 Then I remember, no! 934 00:45:12,724 --> 00:45:15,844 Loads of children just died in horrible accidents all the time! 935 00:45:16,324 --> 00:45:19,464 What's actually happening here is that we have more free time, we have more 936 00:45:19,464 --> 00:45:24,814 wealth, and to some extent, coddling is just rationally 'I love my children. 937 00:45:24,814 --> 00:45:28,554 I don't want any harm.' They could get a traumatic brain injury and you could 938 00:45:28,554 --> 00:45:31,194 get a disfigurement across their face and people might treat them different. 939 00:45:31,385 --> 00:45:32,984 All these things can just happen. 940 00:45:33,654 --> 00:45:37,584 And it's just wrong to think that it was all happening at the same rate. 941 00:45:37,744 --> 00:45:39,014 No, it was happening much more often. 942 00:45:39,329 --> 00:45:42,819 People were getting hit by buses and cars and everything all the time. 943 00:45:43,229 --> 00:45:44,149 Saloni Dattani: I take that view as well. 944 00:45:44,949 --> 00:45:45,624 Ben Southwood: I've shifted so much. 945 00:45:45,624 --> 00:45:48,139 Aria Schrecker: From my own family story, my mum was one 946 00:45:48,139 --> 00:45:51,990 of six in India in the sixties. 947 00:45:51,999 --> 00:45:55,669 So you can just imagine you just crank, crank the clock back basically the 948 00:45:55,669 --> 00:46:00,659 Victorian era and okay, so she lost one sibling to typhoid, but she did she lost 949 00:46:00,669 --> 00:46:04,460 another to just a car accident in a way that I just don't think people would let a 950 00:46:04,460 --> 00:46:12,169 teenager ride a motorbike now, because we know that 17-year-old boys can't - well I 951 00:46:12,169 --> 00:46:15,560 guess actually we do let 17-year-old boys ride motorcycles, but most parents don't 952 00:46:15,560 --> 00:46:17,289 let 17-year-old boys ride motorcycles. 953 00:46:17,289 --> 00:46:21,259 Whereas in India in 1970 something, it was totally normal to do that. 954 00:46:21,620 --> 00:46:21,740 Ben Southwood: Yeah. 955 00:46:21,740 --> 00:46:26,419 I think this is a, part of it is just that, so part of it is that if you treat, 956 00:46:26,990 --> 00:46:29,450 there are a lot of things, ways in which you want to keep your children alive. 957 00:46:29,720 --> 00:46:29,959 Saloni Dattani: Right. 958 00:46:29,959 --> 00:46:33,109 Ben Southwood: And probably that's just a social wide thing of, 'We are 959 00:46:33,109 --> 00:46:36,679 coddling them collectively because we are trying to keep 'em alive and trying 960 00:46:36,679 --> 00:46:40,549 to keep 'em healthy and whatever, until they hit enough majority that they 961 00:46:40,549 --> 00:46:44,119 can be reasonably trusted to do it themselves, or it'll be impossible to 962 00:46:44,119 --> 00:46:45,740 exercise control over them anymore.' 963 00:46:46,609 --> 00:46:46,789 Aria Schrecker: Yeah. 964 00:46:46,789 --> 00:46:50,069 I guess I intuitively agree with your model, but I do think it is 965 00:46:50,069 --> 00:46:54,019 true that even though the world is so much safer, we still don't let 966 00:46:54,079 --> 00:47:00,319 teenagers have the same freedom to roam that clearly we did historically. 967 00:47:00,589 --> 00:47:03,720 You see those little maps where it's family that grew up in the same house 968 00:47:03,740 --> 00:47:06,740 and it's grandfather was allowed when he was seven years old to go all 969 00:47:06,740 --> 00:47:07,999 the way down to the creek and fish. 970 00:47:08,059 --> 00:47:08,419 Fine. 971 00:47:08,689 --> 00:47:10,769 That's obviously, that actually seems insane. 972 00:47:11,184 --> 00:47:14,539 Ben Southwood: I had my first viral tweet ever in 2012 by posting that map. 973 00:47:14,869 --> 00:47:15,499 Aria Schrecker: Oh really? 974 00:47:15,504 --> 00:47:15,744 Okay. 975 00:47:15,744 --> 00:47:17,250 Ben Southwood: Yeah, that specific map, that he goes to Rotherham, 976 00:47:17,740 --> 00:47:19,039 he's allowed to go 11 miles. 977 00:47:19,369 --> 00:47:19,999 Aria Schrecker: There you go. 978 00:47:20,049 --> 00:47:23,539 Ben Southwood: And then the today one is allowed to go to the end of 979 00:47:23,539 --> 00:47:25,409 the street with slight supervision. 980 00:47:25,840 --> 00:47:28,669 I think there are lots of things going into that. 981 00:47:28,799 --> 00:47:33,660 I actually don't necessarily think that one is coddling related. 982 00:47:34,180 --> 00:47:36,890 I mean, it is coddling related, but I don't think it's just 983 00:47:36,890 --> 00:47:37,819 an increase in coddling. 984 00:47:37,970 --> 00:47:40,879 I think that although the world is much safer in general, there 985 00:47:40,879 --> 00:47:43,399 are certain features of the world that are totally different. 986 00:47:43,509 --> 00:47:47,790 So in 1911 there weren't motorways between his house and Rotherham. 987 00:47:48,220 --> 00:47:48,419 Right? 988 00:47:48,419 --> 00:47:51,919 There's just a really dangerous thing that younger, that people under the 989 00:47:51,919 --> 00:47:56,470 age of 10 are not reliably to be trusted to stay safe from perhaps. 990 00:47:57,209 --> 00:48:00,230 So I think that's probably the overwhelming thing, and I think if 991 00:48:00,230 --> 00:48:04,589 you find places where that isn't the case, even at high levels 992 00:48:04,589 --> 00:48:06,604 of wealth Japan, for example. 993 00:48:06,634 --> 00:48:06,934 Saloni Dattani: Right. 994 00:48:06,934 --> 00:48:07,894 Ben Southwood: They'll let children go out. 995 00:48:08,164 --> 00:48:08,404 Aria Schrecker: Yes. 996 00:48:08,404 --> 00:48:08,415 Ben Southwood: Yeah. 997 00:48:08,470 --> 00:48:09,439 And roam relatively freely. 998 00:48:09,439 --> 00:48:10,364 Aria Schrecker: And Japan is actually very very safe. 999 00:48:10,574 --> 00:48:12,014 Saloni Dattani: Have you seen that show where they do that? 1000 00:48:12,054 --> 00:48:16,535 They're kids that are one or three years old just going out doing groceries. 1001 00:48:18,129 --> 00:48:18,649 Ben Southwood: I haven't watched it. 1002 00:48:18,729 --> 00:48:20,044 I have watched clips from it. 1003 00:48:20,194 --> 00:48:20,224 Okay. 1004 00:48:20,334 --> 00:48:24,064 And it's very funny how easily they get distracted from their mission. 1005 00:48:24,874 --> 00:48:29,404 They have no long term ability to keep to the same plan. 1006 00:48:29,584 --> 00:48:33,214 They're just immediate stimulus and then they keep going home because they 1007 00:48:33,214 --> 00:48:34,595 forget what they're supposed to be doing. 1008 00:48:35,644 --> 00:48:38,554 Aria Schrecker: Other coddling related ways that we have definitely 1009 00:48:38,624 --> 00:48:42,954 increased lifespans - I'm endorsing them here, which is there are lots of 1010 00:48:43,094 --> 00:48:46,464 interventions that can actually stop people from committing suicide by, 1011 00:48:46,734 --> 00:48:49,275 making it harder for them to unscrew- 1012 00:48:50,919 --> 00:48:51,299 Saloni Dattani: Pesticide caps, or? 1013 00:48:51,770 --> 00:48:55,480 - Aria Schrecker: pesticide caps and stuff, or even just the American way 1014 00:48:55,480 --> 00:48:58,640 of taking paracetamol just makes it easier for them to commit suicide, 1015 00:48:58,640 --> 00:49:01,399 the British way of paracetamol, you've gotta pop each individual one. 1016 00:49:01,549 --> 00:49:04,339 Saloni Dattani: I think there's also this innovation where pesticides now 1017 00:49:04,339 --> 00:49:06,825 make you throw up or something like that? 1018 00:49:07,694 --> 00:49:08,495 Aria Schrecker: Yeah that would make sense. 1019 00:49:08,600 --> 00:49:10,189 And it probably is actually quite easy to do. 1020 00:49:10,189 --> 00:49:10,520 Yeah. 1021 00:49:10,524 --> 00:49:10,584 Saloni Dattani: Yeah. 1022 00:49:10,819 --> 00:49:12,470 Ben Southwood: They have nets on the Golden Gate bridge. 1023 00:49:12,610 --> 00:49:15,799 Aria Schrecker: There we go, that's I guess coddling, that has definitely 1024 00:49:16,009 --> 00:49:18,670 increased the lifespans, or at least it's definitely stopped some 1025 00:49:18,670 --> 00:49:20,320 people from dying that is good. 1026 00:49:20,520 --> 00:49:23,080 I think banning drunk driving, that's obviously one of those things. 1027 00:49:24,649 --> 00:49:25,490 Saloni Dattani: Seat belts. 1028 00:49:25,490 --> 00:49:26,060 Aria Schrecker: Seat belts. 1029 00:49:26,839 --> 00:49:27,680 Saloni Dattani: Vaccines. 1030 00:49:28,079 --> 00:49:28,329 Aria Schrecker: Yeah. 1031 00:49:28,329 --> 00:49:30,629 We definitely have social infrastructure that is pro-longevity. 1032 00:49:31,799 --> 00:49:32,129 Ben Southwood: Okay. 1033 00:49:32,129 --> 00:49:36,649 So we've talked about every possible way that we stop people from dying in 1034 00:49:36,649 --> 00:49:40,850 accidental ways; stop their organs from failing or from them being overtaken 1035 00:49:40,850 --> 00:49:44,919 by disease that leaves scars and makes them worse or that kills them 1036 00:49:45,139 --> 00:49:47,770 and all things that, we've talked about every conceivable one of those. 1037 00:49:48,830 --> 00:49:53,149 Are there any promising things for the other method? 1038 00:49:53,330 --> 00:49:56,689 The point, the first way, the underlying aging thing. 1039 00:49:56,930 --> 00:50:00,890 Do we have any promising - you go to bed at night thinking 1040 00:50:01,220 --> 00:50:02,779 they'll crack that in my lifetime? 1041 00:50:02,779 --> 00:50:05,810 Or do you go to bed at night thinking, I probably won't die 1042 00:50:05,810 --> 00:50:09,229 of the same diseases that we have now, but I will die of something? 1043 00:50:09,439 --> 00:50:12,049 Aria Schrecker: I think this belies a whack-a-mole mentality, but there 1044 00:50:12,049 --> 00:50:15,049 are a couple of ways where I think that we've fixed that, for the very 1045 00:50:15,049 --> 00:50:18,680 least, for the time when I get old, I think I won't go through menopause. 1046 00:50:18,799 --> 00:50:20,730 That's one that I'm gonna say. 1047 00:50:20,880 --> 00:50:24,399 We've already started to give lots of women HRT, who are 1048 00:50:24,519 --> 00:50:25,729 already of menopause age. 1049 00:50:25,950 --> 00:50:32,209 I just think between now, I'm almost 30 and when I'm 50, 60, I think 1050 00:50:32,209 --> 00:50:33,419 that is gonna get much, much better. 1051 00:50:33,529 --> 00:50:35,959 And I think that's a form of aging that I'm gonna get to basically 1052 00:50:35,959 --> 00:50:38,339 skip out on so that's one thing. 1053 00:50:38,540 --> 00:50:42,720 I think I probably won't die of most of the major cancers that people die of now. 1054 00:50:43,789 --> 00:50:45,994 I think that seems to be just getting better and better and better. 1055 00:50:46,429 --> 00:50:48,169 I think I probably won't get diabetes. 1056 00:50:48,579 --> 00:50:49,959 Ben Southwood: And that might get you to last long enough 1057 00:50:49,959 --> 00:50:51,209 until they find the magic cure. 1058 00:50:52,309 --> 00:50:52,549 Aria Schrecker: Yeah. 1059 00:50:53,089 --> 00:50:55,969 Saloni Dattani: I'm somewhat optimistic about Alzheimer's disease as well. 1060 00:50:55,969 --> 00:51:00,559 I think if we just try enough stuff, maybe we'll find something, but also 1061 00:51:00,559 --> 00:51:03,349 we'll probably just get better at measuring the brain and understanding 1062 00:51:03,349 --> 00:51:05,689 it and finding medicines that work. 1063 00:51:06,049 --> 00:51:10,519 Ben Southwood: What did you think about that viral nature study where they 1064 00:51:10,519 --> 00:51:14,749 said that people rarely get cancer and Alzheimer's at the same time? 1065 00:51:15,680 --> 00:51:17,480 Saloni Dattani: I didn't read that, but I just assumed it 1066 00:51:17,480 --> 00:51:19,070 was some statistical artifact. 1067 00:51:19,674 --> 00:51:20,025 Sadly. 1068 00:51:20,904 --> 00:51:22,865 Ben Southwood: Skeptical Saloni, we should have you on everything. 1069 00:51:22,955 --> 00:51:23,305 Sorry. 1070 00:51:23,874 --> 00:51:25,024 It's probably just statistical. 1071 00:51:25,914 --> 00:51:29,350 Aria Schrecker: Naked mole-rats probably don't even age that badly. 1072 00:51:29,350 --> 00:51:36,020 I think there is other stuff that you can do in your personal life that mean 1073 00:51:36,020 --> 00:51:39,120 that you are probably getting to at least grab some of those pro-longevity 1074 00:51:41,120 --> 00:51:42,660 slowing your aging rate stuff. 1075 00:51:42,830 --> 00:51:46,549 So the biggest one is if you're not fat, you're doing so much more than 1076 00:51:46,759 --> 00:51:51,249 I guess the average person in a developed nation now, and probably if 1077 00:51:51,249 --> 00:51:54,709 you are especially conscious of it and you are staying at one of the lowest 1078 00:51:54,709 --> 00:51:58,439 possible healthy weights for someone of your size, you're doing even more. 1079 00:51:58,909 --> 00:51:59,750 I think that helps. 1080 00:51:59,779 --> 00:52:04,860 I think the probably rapamycin will end up being - I would put 1081 00:52:04,860 --> 00:52:09,620 money on it being a drug that lots of people take in a few decades. 1082 00:52:13,509 --> 00:52:15,999 Ben Southwood: So the sad problem is that it was already an existing 1083 00:52:16,069 --> 00:52:18,959 compound when people realized that it would be useful for this. 1084 00:52:19,189 --> 00:52:25,430 So it's gonna be hard for us to get the investment into the hard evidence that 1085 00:52:25,430 --> 00:52:32,450 we would need without the ability to offer the exclusive sale rights, no? 1086 00:52:32,450 --> 00:52:33,499 Aria Schrecker: So I don't think so. 1087 00:52:33,499 --> 00:52:35,199 I think we are also gonna get new drugs. 1088 00:52:35,240 --> 00:52:40,209 Let's cast back to a piece in issue 21 of Works in Progress, 1089 00:52:41,189 --> 00:52:45,849 Nature's Laboratory about how genes seem to be a source of new drugs. 1090 00:52:46,169 --> 00:52:49,569 I think we are gonna get much, much better at measuring people's genomes and picking 1091 00:52:49,569 --> 00:52:55,749 up statistical signals that show that some genes help you live longer, which will be 1092 00:52:55,749 --> 00:53:00,029 a source of novel compounds that we learn about, that we'll be like, okay, we're 1093 00:53:00,029 --> 00:53:02,980 gonna imitate the effect of this gene because in almost everyone who has this 1094 00:53:02,980 --> 00:53:08,289 gene, they live an extra while, and they don't develop these age related disorders. 1095 00:53:08,859 --> 00:53:10,850 We will find some of those genes and we will start to 1096 00:53:10,850 --> 00:53:11,990 make drugs that replicate that. 1097 00:53:11,990 --> 00:53:16,129 So I think we will actually get to having novel compounds, basically if the course 1098 00:53:16,129 --> 00:53:20,660 of science continues as it seems to, I think we probably will get some all-cause 1099 00:53:20,810 --> 00:53:23,205 mortality tackling drugs from genomes. 1100 00:53:23,604 --> 00:53:24,109 That's one guess. 1101 00:53:24,159 --> 00:53:27,819 Saloni Dattani: That has actually happened in a few high profile examples 1102 00:53:27,964 --> 00:53:33,034 of drugs that have come from that, from studying some population or some family 1103 00:53:33,034 --> 00:53:36,964 that either has a very high risk of dying early or lives longer for some 1104 00:53:36,964 --> 00:53:40,149 reason, and then trying to understand what gene is linked to that and 1105 00:53:42,154 --> 00:53:43,504 then developing drugs against that. 1106 00:53:43,504 --> 00:53:48,284 So I think the famous one is PCSK9 drugs, which reduce cholesterol levels, 1107 00:53:49,154 --> 00:53:54,200 but then there's also various other cholesterol and other drugs that are 1108 00:53:54,200 --> 00:53:55,530 in the pipeline for things like that. 1109 00:53:55,580 --> 00:53:59,900 Aria Schrecker: Big thing I'm hoping for is an ozempic style thing, but instead 1110 00:53:59,900 --> 00:54:01,880 of meaning that you eat less it just 1111 00:54:04,650 --> 00:54:07,940 burns all the energy without it going into your body and coming 1112 00:54:07,940 --> 00:54:09,020 out as fat in you somehow. 1113 00:54:09,049 --> 00:54:09,140 Saloni Dattani: Yeah. 1114 00:54:09,529 --> 00:54:11,190 Aria Schrecker: I know there's one of those drugs that is meant to do 1115 00:54:11,190 --> 00:54:14,540 that, but it basically burns you from the inside, so no one can take it. 1116 00:54:14,790 --> 00:54:15,290 Saloni Dattani: That was dangerous. 1117 00:54:16,424 --> 00:54:16,785 Aria Schrecker: I don't want to take that one. 1118 00:54:16,785 --> 00:54:18,649 Saloni Dattani: There was previously a weight loss drug that basically 1119 00:54:18,649 --> 00:54:22,369 made you just excrete all the fat out, and it was dangerous. 1120 00:54:22,579 --> 00:54:27,149 Aria Schrecker: I had a crackpot idea a while ago which is - so Vaseline 1121 00:54:27,539 --> 00:54:30,019 Petroleum, it's basically a fat. 1122 00:54:30,209 --> 00:54:31,879 I reckon if you fried your food in it... 1123 00:54:35,599 --> 00:54:37,039 Saloni Dattani: Wait, if we fried our food in it, what? 1124 00:54:37,329 --> 00:54:39,889 Aria Schrecker: It would basically, you would get basically the maillard reaction. 1125 00:54:39,899 --> 00:54:45,049 It would taste like fatty food but you can't digest it, and people 1126 00:54:45,429 --> 00:54:46,829 - I'm always digesting Vaseline. 1127 00:54:48,229 --> 00:54:50,234 Ben Southwood: So we were talking about acarbose earlier. 1128 00:54:50,234 --> 00:54:53,994 Now, I'm gonna forget the name, but there's an equivalent for fat. 1129 00:54:55,284 --> 00:54:59,674 So acarbose, it works by stopping you from producing amylase, so 1130 00:54:59,674 --> 00:55:02,044 you can't digest carbohydrates. 1131 00:55:02,044 --> 00:55:04,834 They effectively become a fiber, because fiber is just carbohydrates 1132 00:55:04,834 --> 00:55:08,114 you can't digest basically or fiber that gets through to the gut. 1133 00:55:08,504 --> 00:55:11,664 This one stops you from producing what is it called? 1134 00:55:12,354 --> 00:55:14,384 The enzyme that digests fat? 1135 00:55:15,589 --> 00:55:16,009 Saloni Dattani: Lipase. 1136 00:55:16,585 --> 00:55:17,054 Ben Southwood: Lipase. 1137 00:55:17,064 --> 00:55:17,464 Lipase. 1138 00:55:17,494 --> 00:55:20,644 Yeah and so all your fat just goes through to your gut. 1139 00:55:20,644 --> 00:55:25,994 Now I'd say that I would rather have the gastrointestinal symptoms of acarbose, 1140 00:55:26,134 --> 00:55:30,344 which is just lots of bloating and gas than what they call greasy stools. 1141 00:55:30,834 --> 00:55:31,364 Yeah which is- 1142 00:55:32,409 --> 00:55:33,129 Saloni Dattani: Floating stools. 1143 00:55:34,329 --> 00:55:35,209 Aria Schrecker: I don't mind if they float. 1144 00:55:35,409 --> 00:55:36,809 I feel neutrally about whether they float. 1145 00:55:37,049 --> 00:55:37,249 Ben Southwood: Yeah. 1146 00:55:37,444 --> 00:55:38,854 Aria Schrecker: Well, it's really hard to flush them. 1147 00:55:39,824 --> 00:55:40,304 I think I'll work at it. 1148 00:55:40,304 --> 00:55:42,489 I can figure that one out. 1149 00:55:42,689 --> 00:55:43,149 I'll be okay. 1150 00:55:43,404 --> 00:55:45,804 Ben Southwood: Obviously, I brought this topic up, so it is inevitable that 1151 00:55:45,804 --> 00:55:49,324 it would be slightly unpleasant, but point is that it's slightly unpleasant. 1152 00:55:49,544 --> 00:55:53,694 You can do that, but to the extent that you, and this reduces your calorie 1153 00:55:53,914 --> 00:55:56,184 intake, but an enormous fraction. 1154 00:55:56,294 --> 00:55:58,554 All the fat you're eating is just going through. 1155 00:55:58,894 --> 00:56:00,034 Right so you can do this. 1156 00:56:00,154 --> 00:56:02,854 That's an option that's open to you right now it's a generic drug. 1157 00:56:02,914 --> 00:56:03,454 However- 1158 00:56:04,114 --> 00:56:04,719 Aria Schrecker: This is not diet advice. 1159 00:56:04,789 --> 00:56:08,314 Ben Southwood: The downside - well, no, it's perfectly safe, again it was 1160 00:56:08,314 --> 00:56:11,524 approved through the normal process then on very large studies and then 1161 00:56:11,524 --> 00:56:12,844 post-market, very large studies. 1162 00:56:13,114 --> 00:56:14,274 Everyone knows how it works. 1163 00:56:14,774 --> 00:56:20,654 So there's no health downsides, it's just quite unpleasant to have 1164 00:56:20,654 --> 00:56:23,614 lots of actual oil in your stools. 1165 00:56:23,814 --> 00:56:28,364 So that would be a downside of your petroleum jelly frying. 1166 00:56:28,504 --> 00:56:30,304 Aria Schrecker: Well, I was a little as well bit worried that one of the 1167 00:56:30,304 --> 00:56:33,514 potential problems with it when I was looking into it was that it might just 1168 00:56:33,694 --> 00:56:36,144 coat the inside of your intestine and then 1169 00:56:37,384 --> 00:56:40,055 - Ben Southwood: I think it will probably just go through when 1170 00:56:40,055 --> 00:56:41,094 you don't have any lipase. 1171 00:56:41,344 --> 00:56:44,854 Saloni Dattani: Well, I think the better drugs that work on cardiovascular 1172 00:56:44,874 --> 00:56:48,844 - like cholesterol reducing drugs and triglyceride reducing drugs are 1173 00:56:48,844 --> 00:56:52,824 better because they're not engulfing - they're not leaving fat in your 1174 00:56:53,014 --> 00:56:57,784 digestive tracts, but they mean that you mop up more LDL cholesterol or 1175 00:56:57,784 --> 00:56:59,779 whatever, and that's probably better. 1176 00:57:00,604 --> 00:57:03,934 Ben Southwood: A favorite fact of mine - So I spend a lot of time on the internet. 1177 00:57:04,174 --> 00:57:08,924 I spend a lot of time on the internet consuming research about - consuming on a 1178 00:57:08,924 --> 00:57:13,684 superficial level research about health, diet, all those sorts of things, and one 1179 00:57:13,684 --> 00:57:18,544 of the things that I discovered in all of this is that in a lot of studies, raw 1180 00:57:18,544 --> 00:57:25,139 correlation between cholesterol levels and lifespan is positive, not negative. 1181 00:57:25,139 --> 00:57:25,349 Right? 1182 00:57:25,469 --> 00:57:26,119 In a lot of studies. 1183 00:57:26,849 --> 00:57:31,939 And I was confused by this because there are loads of drugs that reduce 1184 00:57:31,939 --> 00:57:33,439 cholesterol and appear to be good for you. 1185 00:57:33,549 --> 00:57:33,729 Saloni Dattani: Yep. 1186 00:57:34,249 --> 00:57:38,899 Ben Southwood: And so I presented this to Stefan Guyenet, who is a nutrition 1187 00:57:38,899 --> 00:57:42,439 expert and wrote for Works in Progress back in the day, and he said, yes, 1188 00:57:42,469 --> 00:57:45,689 strangely enough, having genetically higher cholesterol is good for you, 1189 00:57:46,479 --> 00:57:48,199 but also reducing it is good for you. 1190 00:57:48,809 --> 00:57:52,229 And so clearly having genetically high cholesterol is a signal of overall 1191 00:57:52,249 --> 00:57:53,449 body health in some sort of way. 1192 00:57:53,449 --> 00:57:57,029 And cholesterol itself is probably bad for you, but it's the mechanisms of 1193 00:57:57,029 --> 00:58:00,469 action of how these things actually work is slightly more confusing 1194 00:58:00,469 --> 00:58:01,609 than when we started using them. 1195 00:58:02,509 --> 00:58:04,879 Saloni Dattani: So we're gonna talk about this in an episode of Hard 1196 00:58:04,879 --> 00:58:08,539 Drugs, but the problem with cholesterol is not the cholesterol itself, 1197 00:58:08,539 --> 00:58:09,949 it's the particles that carry it. 1198 00:58:10,339 --> 00:58:15,529 And if those particles are small enough, they get into your blood vessels and just 1199 00:58:15,649 --> 00:58:20,819 stick there, and that you know, causes atherosclerosis, and that can reduce your 1200 00:58:21,089 --> 00:58:24,779 ability to circulate blood efficiently. 1201 00:58:24,889 --> 00:58:26,419 Ben Southwood: Let's say it ages your blood vessels. 1202 00:58:27,060 --> 00:58:31,100 Saloni Dattani: Essentially, and so it's not about the total amount 1203 00:58:31,159 --> 00:58:35,119 of cholesterol in your body that is a marker for poor health. 1204 00:58:35,119 --> 00:58:39,349 It's about the type of cholesterol particles and how big they are and 1205 00:58:39,399 --> 00:58:42,189 how, where they stick, things that. 1206 00:58:42,629 --> 00:58:45,349 So I think there is a way around this that makes it work. 1207 00:58:46,039 --> 00:58:47,869 Ben Southwood: You mean makes easy intuitive sense. 1208 00:58:48,079 --> 00:58:48,379 Saloni Dattani: Yeah. 1209 00:58:48,499 --> 00:58:49,429 And is also true. 1210 00:58:49,999 --> 00:58:50,179 Ben Southwood: Yeah. 1211 00:58:50,809 --> 00:58:54,679 So we talked about some drugs that seem to extend the life of various different 1212 00:58:54,679 --> 00:58:56,509 groups of mice when we really test them. 1213 00:58:57,079 --> 00:59:00,889 There are some other things that probably extend life. 1214 00:59:00,889 --> 00:59:04,429 I don't think that they've been tested to the level where we can say with 1215 00:59:04,819 --> 00:59:08,179 really absolute certainty that in a normal person they would extend life. 1216 00:59:08,449 --> 00:59:12,099 But I gather from the kinds of evidence I've seen, they're pretty good. 1217 00:59:12,099 --> 00:59:14,629 So one coffee, right? 1218 00:59:14,629 --> 00:59:18,319 So I said before, green tea probably doesn't extend life, or at least that 1219 00:59:18,319 --> 00:59:22,819 there's no compelling evidence that it extends life, but coffee is pretty cool 1220 00:59:22,819 --> 00:59:30,199 in that, it seems like if you go in big studies of a population, like Americans, 1221 00:59:30,359 --> 00:59:34,939 and then you look at how much coffee they have per day from zero to say six cups, 1222 00:59:35,029 --> 00:59:38,599 it's pretty dose dependent on lots of different diseases, especially kidney. 1223 00:59:38,789 --> 00:59:44,869 But on a range of different diseases, it seems it's - then if you look at 1224 00:59:45,299 --> 00:59:49,809 again, they've never done a proper randomized control trial on coffee, 1225 00:59:49,809 --> 00:59:52,969 because the cost of doing that would be tens of millions or hundreds, millions 1226 00:59:52,969 --> 00:59:54,709 of dollars to get past all the stages. 1227 00:59:54,799 --> 00:59:56,929 And then everyone's already allowed to sell coffee, so you 1228 00:59:56,929 --> 00:59:57,829 can't make any money from that. 1229 00:59:57,829 --> 01:00:00,859 So we've only got slightly less good information than that. 1230 01:00:00,859 --> 01:00:03,709 But there are lots of small, randomized control trials and they all, they 1231 01:00:03,709 --> 01:00:06,169 usually find the same results, especially if you add them all together. 1232 01:00:06,229 --> 01:00:06,319 And 1233 01:00:08,919 --> 01:00:11,099 then there are bigger, cohort studies where they're looking at people through 1234 01:00:11,099 --> 01:00:15,379 their life, how much coffee they have, and they all find coffee extends life. 1235 01:00:15,379 --> 01:00:16,369 So maybe coffee is- 1236 01:00:16,369 --> 01:00:17,239 Saloni Dattani: I'm skeptical of this. 1237 01:00:17,284 --> 01:00:17,554 Ben Southwood: Okay. 1238 01:00:17,724 --> 01:00:18,394 I love, I love it. 1239 01:00:18,534 --> 01:00:19,069 Tell me why. 1240 01:00:19,129 --> 01:00:21,709 Saloni Dattani: Well, I would guess that there is just a confounding 1241 01:00:21,709 --> 01:00:25,819 there, and that people who drink more coffee are healthier and that if you 1242 01:00:26,029 --> 01:00:29,569 drink coffee, you wouldn't be able to take various drugs and things that 1243 01:00:29,599 --> 01:00:31,119 you would need if you had a disease. 1244 01:00:31,819 --> 01:00:35,319 So I feel there are probably various things that and I'd wanna look into 1245 01:00:35,580 --> 01:00:36,359 how they actually did those studies. 1246 01:00:36,884 --> 01:00:38,184 Ben Southwood: The reason why I'm not convinced by you... 1247 01:00:40,504 --> 01:00:43,459 I'm open, I'm not gonna fall down on the floor and be really 1248 01:00:43,459 --> 01:00:45,159 embarrassed if you prove me wrong. 1249 01:00:45,679 --> 01:00:51,979 You often do that in the past, but the reason why I don't jump to confounding in 1250 01:00:51,979 --> 01:00:56,029 my own head, is that I just don't think that the - the usual confounder that you 1251 01:00:56,029 --> 01:00:58,689 find is basically socioeconomic status. 1252 01:00:58,939 --> 01:01:01,679 So when you're doing these kinds of big studies you usually just find 1253 01:01:01,679 --> 01:01:04,489 that anything good, so exercise, for example; now I actually 1254 01:01:04,519 --> 01:01:05,920 think exercise does extend life. 1255 01:01:06,539 --> 01:01:10,279 But if you told me I can't trust any of these studies because they're obviously 1256 01:01:10,279 --> 01:01:14,599 compounded, then I would say yes because everyone I know in my own life, it clearly 1257 01:01:14,599 --> 01:01:16,110 correlates with socioeconomic status. 1258 01:01:16,110 --> 01:01:19,639 How much deliberate exercise people do, and healthy eating, and there 1259 01:01:19,639 --> 01:01:20,349 are so many different things. 1260 01:01:20,529 --> 01:01:22,579 I just do not think coffee has that correlation at all. 1261 01:01:22,789 --> 01:01:26,889 And if anything, I've lived a life of people propagandizing 1262 01:01:27,039 --> 01:01:29,719 and intuitively believing that having too much coffee is bad. 1263 01:01:29,839 --> 01:01:36,649 And so I would've guessed that in the US, coffee drinking negatively, or is like 1264 01:01:36,819 --> 01:01:38,289 flat, or negatively correlates coffee. 1265 01:01:38,299 --> 01:01:40,819 Aria Schrecker: Conscientious people are always giving up coffee. 1266 01:01:40,879 --> 01:01:44,589 Ben Southwood: Yeah, I just don't believe that they will find that coffee 1267 01:01:44,879 --> 01:01:46,009 correlates with socioeconomic status. 1268 01:01:46,009 --> 01:01:48,399 Saloni Dattani: Well, it's also expensive if you're having that many 1269 01:01:48,399 --> 01:01:51,949 drinks, I do think that, I would guess that there is a correlation. 1270 01:01:52,219 --> 01:01:55,049 Ben Southwood: Interesting, well we will have to look into this and 1271 01:01:55,049 --> 01:02:00,589 then I'll do an apology post on my, 'Saloni was right again, I was wrong. 1272 01:02:00,919 --> 01:02:02,449 Skepticism was the right answer. 1273 01:02:02,589 --> 01:02:04,999 It turned out that my wild ability to believe..' Okay. 1274 01:02:05,089 --> 01:02:05,929 Let's try another one. 1275 01:02:06,379 --> 01:02:06,679 Saloni Dattani: Sure. 1276 01:02:06,799 --> 01:02:08,729 Ben Southwood: Having a walk after you eat something. 1277 01:02:09,819 --> 01:02:12,469 I reckon having a walk after you eat something might be good. 1278 01:02:13,359 --> 01:02:18,090 I think it might be you haven't got acarbose, we did have a walk after you 1279 01:02:18,090 --> 01:02:21,739 ate something, in particular just after. 1280 01:02:21,739 --> 01:02:25,410 So one of the main hypotheses why all these drugs metformin, acarbose, SGLT2 1281 01:02:28,049 --> 01:02:32,389 inhibitors, have a positive effect on lifespan in the humans who take 1282 01:02:32,389 --> 01:02:36,109 them, which is obviously indirectly through their diseases, and in the 1283 01:02:36,109 --> 01:02:39,979 healthy mice or rats or whatever that we're giving them to, one of the 1284 01:02:39,979 --> 01:02:43,699 hypotheses is that it is not that they slow down your metabolism overall, 1285 01:02:43,699 --> 01:02:45,289 they just reduce blood sugar spikes. 1286 01:02:45,379 --> 01:02:45,649 Saloni Dattani: Yep. 1287 01:02:46,209 --> 01:02:49,394 Ben Southwood: And walking, having a walk after you eat reduces blood. 1288 01:02:49,494 --> 01:02:49,664 That's 1289 01:02:49,664 --> 01:02:49,835 like, 1290 01:02:49,864 --> 01:02:52,204 Ben Southwood: we know that it does, it reduces blood sugar spikes. 1291 01:02:52,224 --> 01:02:55,535 Aria Schrecker: And a little extra plus to that is that there's some evidence 1292 01:02:55,535 --> 01:03:00,469 that, and obviously most people do this anyway, that if you eat the sugary things 1293 01:03:00,469 --> 01:03:03,709 after you have already started eating, that has less of an extreme spike to 1294 01:03:03,709 --> 01:03:06,619 your blood sugar as well, because I guess your insulin is already started 1295 01:03:06,639 --> 01:03:10,899 to run, and it's better to have ice cream after your meal and not before. 1296 01:03:12,199 --> 01:03:15,139 Ben Southwood: Or have a salad before you start eating, or whatever it is. 1297 01:03:15,179 --> 01:03:16,269 Or to have some fiber. 1298 01:03:16,409 --> 01:03:16,699 Saloni Dattani: Right. 1299 01:03:16,869 --> 01:03:19,969 I like to have dessert at the start of the meal, because otherwise 1300 01:03:19,969 --> 01:03:21,109 I might get too full to eat it. 1301 01:03:21,484 --> 01:03:22,594 Ben Southwood: But there's a second stomach. 1302 01:03:22,609 --> 01:03:24,829 Saloni Dattani: Now you've convinced me that I shouldn't be doing that. 1303 01:03:24,919 --> 01:03:25,959 Ben Southwood: Well look everything's a trade off. 1304 01:03:26,539 --> 01:03:29,589 What else do we have in this list of potentially normal things you can do? 1305 01:03:29,619 --> 01:03:30,389 Aria Schrecker: Blood donation. 1306 01:03:31,245 --> 01:03:31,674 Ben Southwood: Ah blood donation. 1307 01:03:31,864 --> 01:03:32,389 Saloni Dattani: I don't believe that one either. 1308 01:03:32,389 --> 01:03:32,539 Ben Southwood: Yeah. 1309 01:03:32,539 --> 01:03:33,620 No, I know you don't believe that one. 1310 01:03:33,620 --> 01:03:39,189 So, so we, this is a long time open sore, between Saloni and me, ruining 1311 01:03:39,279 --> 01:03:41,759 our relationship is blood donation. 1312 01:03:41,879 --> 01:03:43,669 So blood donation. 1313 01:03:43,999 --> 01:03:45,649 Fair enough, fair enough. 1314 01:03:45,649 --> 01:03:49,439 Fair cop governor, it obviously correlates with socioeconomic status. 1315 01:03:52,239 --> 01:03:54,529 Saloni Dattani: But also a lot of unhealthy people are ruled out 1316 01:03:54,529 --> 01:03:57,969 from donating blood for various reasons, like too high BMI whatever. 1317 01:03:58,189 --> 01:04:00,439 Aria Schrecker: But I'm told that once you control for all of that, 1318 01:04:01,069 --> 01:04:02,329 blood donors still live longer. 1319 01:04:02,864 --> 01:04:04,519 Saloni Dattani: I haven't seen a study showing that. 1320 01:04:04,649 --> 01:04:06,349 Aria Schrecker: I've seen a little text on a blog and a hyperlink 1321 01:04:06,349 --> 01:04:08,019 to a study, that I can click on. 1322 01:04:09,129 --> 01:04:09,879 Saloni Dattani: I'd be skeptical. 1323 01:04:09,879 --> 01:04:13,909 I just think that healthier people are more likely to donate 1324 01:04:13,909 --> 01:04:15,319 thing is actually really strong. 1325 01:04:15,354 --> 01:04:17,344 Ben Southwood: I'm open-minded on this. 1326 01:04:17,584 --> 01:04:23,209 When I liked to talk about this a lot more than I do now, still like to talk about 1327 01:04:23,209 --> 01:04:29,449 it, but when I was really into it, my theory was that it reduced iron stores. 1328 01:04:29,469 --> 01:04:32,239 That iron stores above a certain level, it is established that there 1329 01:04:32,239 --> 01:04:34,449 is such thing as iron overload, and that you can have too much iron. 1330 01:04:35,679 --> 01:04:36,889 The authorities agree on this. 1331 01:04:37,109 --> 01:04:41,849 The Ben version was that that level was lower in terms of not complete 1332 01:04:41,859 --> 01:04:45,469 overload, but that there were numerous deleterious effects that you 1333 01:04:45,469 --> 01:04:46,649 could experience beyond that point. 1334 01:04:47,139 --> 01:04:51,439 For reasons that, the suspicious thing is that there are multiple different reasons 1335 01:04:51,439 --> 01:04:56,639 you could give, for example, bacteria like eating iron, so it might be you get more 1336 01:04:56,639 --> 01:04:59,619 infections, right or various other things. 1337 01:05:00,169 --> 01:05:04,129 Now what I liked is that there were some weird potential ways of looking at this. 1338 01:05:04,339 --> 01:05:10,169 For example, one study looked at coal miners and compared coal miners 1339 01:05:10,189 --> 01:05:15,420 in ferrous deposits I coal that has iron, and non ferrous deposits, and 1340 01:05:15,420 --> 01:05:18,679 found that black lung rates were dramatically higher in the ferrous 1341 01:05:18,919 --> 01:05:21,779 - black lung being a standard disease of coal miners - in the ferrous ones. 1342 01:05:21,779 --> 01:05:26,349 And I thought hmm, maybe this person came into this with my view and 1343 01:05:26,349 --> 01:05:28,549 they were trying to substantiate it. 1344 01:05:28,549 --> 01:05:30,919 But if not, that's interesting. 1345 01:05:32,119 --> 01:05:38,959 A second interesting one is that cigarette smokers seem to have much higher rates 1346 01:05:38,959 --> 01:05:44,179 of lung cancer than cannabis smokers, and now there are lots of other things 1347 01:05:44,179 --> 01:05:48,169 going on there, but one interesting factor is that cigarette smoke has a lot more 1348 01:05:48,169 --> 01:05:51,299 iron in it than Cannabis smoke does. 1349 01:05:51,530 --> 01:05:55,044 And it's possible that there are some - obviously burning anything and inhaling 1350 01:05:55,044 --> 01:06:00,194 it, it's basically one of the canonical bad things to do, but it's possible that, 1351 01:06:01,634 --> 01:06:03,274 I was wondering if that might be related. 1352 01:06:03,424 --> 01:06:09,064 And there were a number, but these days I think that when you have lots and lots of 1353 01:06:09,064 --> 01:06:12,535 small interlocking reasons to belief that something rather than one big reason? 1354 01:06:12,785 --> 01:06:15,955 That's a reason for suspicion because it might be that you 1355 01:06:16,024 --> 01:06:17,254 want to find the conclusion. 1356 01:06:17,254 --> 01:06:20,785 And then you are joining onto things that individually are not 1357 01:06:20,785 --> 01:06:22,864 that convincing, but that join up. 1358 01:06:22,894 --> 01:06:25,344 But I'm still interested in it as a hypothesis. 1359 01:06:25,414 --> 01:06:27,064 Saloni Dattani: I think people should donate blood for 1360 01:06:27,064 --> 01:06:29,044 other people to live longer. 1361 01:06:29,104 --> 01:06:29,344 Ben Southwood: Yeah. 1362 01:06:29,515 --> 01:06:30,039 Saloni Dattani: Probably not for themselves. 1363 01:06:30,699 --> 01:06:34,154 Aria Schrecker: I thought the other mechanism by which blood donation 1364 01:06:34,154 --> 01:06:38,384 might work is, so big fish have lots of heavy metals in them. 1365 01:06:38,664 --> 01:06:43,804 And basically that's because if you eat a smaller fish, it's got heavy metals in it. 1366 01:06:43,804 --> 01:06:47,164 Your body has no way of disposing of it, so if you are higher up the food 1367 01:06:47,164 --> 01:06:49,194 chain, you'll accumulate more of them. 1368 01:06:49,324 --> 01:06:50,914 And we're reasonably high up the food chain. 1369 01:06:50,914 --> 01:06:53,504 We eat things with heavy metals in them, and we don't really have a way of 1370 01:06:53,504 --> 01:06:56,739 disposing it except for literally just getting rid of that part of your body. 1371 01:06:57,034 --> 01:07:00,305 Saloni Dattani: The thing that I don't get though is how exactly it works, 1372 01:07:00,305 --> 01:07:04,534 because I would suspect that higher concentrations of things are bad for 1373 01:07:04,534 --> 01:07:07,504 you, but if you're donating blood, you're just reducing the volume. 1374 01:07:07,504 --> 01:07:08,854 You're not necessarily reducing concentrations. 1375 01:07:09,004 --> 01:07:11,904 Ben Southwood: No, it reduces your iron rate very significantly afterwards. 1376 01:07:12,304 --> 01:07:15,034 Losing that iron then your iron gets spread out across your total 1377 01:07:15,034 --> 01:07:19,114 blood, and so your ferritin levels go down significantly after. 1378 01:07:19,164 --> 01:07:20,604 Saloni Dattani: So there's no homeostasis? 1379 01:07:20,794 --> 01:07:22,744 Ben Southwood: No, you can't, you don't replenish the iron straight away. 1380 01:07:22,944 --> 01:07:26,704 And so this is one of the underlying reasons why people believe in it, right? 1381 01:07:27,314 --> 01:07:31,934 So, the hypothesis is something like 'We were made to just lose a lot more 1382 01:07:31,934 --> 01:07:36,064 blood' and so, for one thing is that all the things I'm talking about, women 1383 01:07:36,064 --> 01:07:39,834 don't have these problems in the same way that men do, premenopausal women. 1384 01:07:40,045 --> 01:07:42,424 And obviously they're losing a lot of blood, and the hypothesis would 1385 01:07:42,424 --> 01:07:45,034 be that in the past people lost a lot more blood, and they sweat a lot more. 1386 01:07:45,194 --> 01:07:47,224 So when you sweat, you lose iron through the sweat as well. 1387 01:07:47,764 --> 01:07:51,374 And so then the people who believe in these things, they'll attach in saunas 1388 01:07:51,765 --> 01:07:52,144 - Saloni Dattani: Got it. 1389 01:07:52,384 --> 01:07:54,794 Ben Southwood: Now we might be skeptical that saunas extend life, but 1390 01:07:54,794 --> 01:07:57,955 if you already believe that reducing iron extends life, then you're very 1391 01:07:57,955 --> 01:08:01,194 susceptible to believing that saunas [extend] life, because you sweat out iron 1392 01:08:01,225 --> 01:08:03,204 when you're sa when you're in a sauna. 1393 01:08:03,455 --> 01:08:07,474 I wanted to ask about another thing which is, so this, I'm interested 1394 01:08:07,474 --> 01:08:08,794 in this heavy metals theory. 1395 01:08:09,214 --> 01:08:15,654 So this heavy metal theory gets at one of the core underlying questions that - the 1396 01:08:15,654 --> 01:08:19,834 animal's question is very interesting; the animal's information that you 1397 01:08:19,834 --> 01:08:21,454 bring in is a very interesting answer. 1398 01:08:21,604 --> 01:08:25,414 Is there an inherent trade off between lifespan and other 1399 01:08:25,414 --> 01:08:26,794 variables that we care about? 1400 01:08:26,944 --> 01:08:28,524 Is that just an inherent trade off? 1401 01:08:29,254 --> 01:08:31,084 Or can you have more of everything? 1402 01:08:31,819 --> 01:08:35,690 And the case in favor of the inherent trade off thing would be obviously you 1403 01:08:35,690 --> 01:08:40,099 have to slow it down, your metabolism, that's bad, fast growth is a trade off. 1404 01:08:40,279 --> 01:08:45,070 And also that, but then you go even deeper and say what were we evolving for? 1405 01:08:45,070 --> 01:08:46,080 What was the goal here? 1406 01:08:46,080 --> 01:08:50,254 Because in principle, you would expect that living as long as possible 1407 01:08:50,254 --> 01:08:51,499 is good for us, for a creature. 1408 01:08:51,639 --> 01:08:54,169 But most creatures don't try and live as long as possible, which 1409 01:08:54,169 --> 01:08:58,240 suggests that after a certain point it's a trade off against other goods. 1410 01:08:58,489 --> 01:09:03,769 Now, are those goods, those other goods only relevant to humans in the 1411 01:09:03,769 --> 01:09:05,989 state of nature and not to us now? 1412 01:09:05,989 --> 01:09:07,009 Or are they trade offs? 1413 01:09:07,279 --> 01:09:08,509 Are they genuine trade offs? 1414 01:09:09,249 --> 01:09:15,289 The reason I ask this question is that, one hypothesis about what might 1415 01:09:15,289 --> 01:09:18,829 be going wrong is that we've got things in our cells called lysosomes. 1416 01:09:18,829 --> 01:09:22,459 They're storing up all the - if you can't really process 1417 01:09:22,459 --> 01:09:23,680 something, it's going in there. 1418 01:09:24,240 --> 01:09:26,719 Sometimes you've got really slow rates that you can process 1419 01:09:26,719 --> 01:09:29,209 it, sometimes you don't. 1420 01:09:29,479 --> 01:09:29,779 Now. 1421 01:09:30,724 --> 01:09:34,535 One hypothesis you could build from this is that we've got basically a 1422 01:09:34,535 --> 01:09:38,354 max lifespan limited by our intakes of all of these different things. 1423 01:09:38,534 --> 01:09:41,854 But that's a good answer because if we could just find some way of clearing them 1424 01:09:41,854 --> 01:09:45,844 out with the drug or something, then we can just solve all our problems like that. 1425 01:09:45,865 --> 01:09:48,484 If that was the main, if the overload of various different stuff we're 1426 01:09:48,484 --> 01:09:51,334 getting into us with the problem, then that would be really solvable. 1427 01:09:51,455 --> 01:09:55,594 Aria Schrecker: So I guess what you say actually prompts a slightly difficult 1428 01:09:55,684 --> 01:10:00,724 for me to reason about question here, which is that clearly if- you can 1429 01:10:00,724 --> 01:10:03,154 understand why aging is sort of adaptive. 1430 01:10:03,174 --> 01:10:08,494 If you think about us as this human species is together, we're all 1431 01:10:08,494 --> 01:10:14,134 coordinating together here, whereby if we didn't age and die and pass 1432 01:10:14,134 --> 01:10:16,445 on our genes to the next generation, we wouldn't be able to evolve. 1433 01:10:16,445 --> 01:10:20,945 We wouldn't be able to keep adapting and so we should, from the perspective of 1434 01:10:20,945 --> 01:10:27,105 our genes value having two children, four grandchildren, et cetera, et cetera as 1435 01:10:27,105 --> 01:10:31,714 much, and those genes also get to be a bit extra selected and each time it goes on. 1436 01:10:31,954 --> 01:10:36,434 But it doesn't make sense to me at least why then you wouldn't defect 1437 01:10:36,454 --> 01:10:39,574 against the rest of your species almost by living much longer and taking up 1438 01:10:39,574 --> 01:10:41,924 a much larger proportion of humanity. 1439 01:10:43,414 --> 01:10:44,284 Ben Southwood: I mean yeah. 1440 01:10:44,284 --> 01:10:46,774 So when you were giving your, this is intuitive to me. 1441 01:10:46,804 --> 01:10:47,014 Aria Schrecker: Yeah. 1442 01:10:47,085 --> 01:10:49,094 Ben Southwood: I was well that would be intuitive for me if I believe 1443 01:10:49,124 --> 01:10:52,864 that natural selection operated at the level of a whole species. 1444 01:10:53,074 --> 01:10:56,814 But given that I believe it happens at the level of an individual gene or something 1445 01:10:56,814 --> 01:10:59,994 like that, that's the best way of thinking about it, then I can't see that at all. 1446 01:11:00,314 --> 01:11:03,564 Your intuitive thing should be, they wanna live as long as possible. 1447 01:11:03,574 --> 01:11:05,025 So there must be a trade off. 1448 01:11:05,194 --> 01:11:08,134 Aria Schrecker: There might be a little sign here with the jellyfish that 1449 01:11:08,434 --> 01:11:13,134 I was talking about, where it seems its population in the ocean seems to 1450 01:11:13,144 --> 01:11:16,225 be increasing quite, quite rapidly. 1451 01:11:16,614 --> 01:11:21,959 To the point that it is causing problems to a bunch of - basically 1452 01:11:21,989 --> 01:11:23,299 to its own ecological niche. 1453 01:11:23,809 --> 01:11:27,504 It's flooding it, I guess at some point it'll hit some Malthusian 1454 01:11:29,525 --> 01:11:33,054 point, but it might only hit that point after the things that that 1455 01:11:33,064 --> 01:11:37,514 jellyfish eats is totally gone, and it's habitat's totally overrun. 1456 01:11:37,684 --> 01:11:39,184 So it might cause its own extinction. 1457 01:11:39,424 --> 01:11:41,554 Saloni Dattani: We used to face this trade off and now we don't. 1458 01:11:42,064 --> 01:11:44,035 Aria Schrecker: So maybe there's something like that that happens, where 1459 01:11:44,394 --> 01:11:46,564 this animal might actually just die out. 1460 01:11:46,765 --> 01:11:50,674 It's gonna take up a massive proportion of it's niche and then 1461 01:11:50,674 --> 01:11:51,634 it's gonna kill its niche off. 1462 01:11:51,924 --> 01:11:56,784 And that maybe has happened before with other animals that have slightly 1463 01:11:56,984 --> 01:12:00,665 outdone their lifespan that they were ought to have or something. 1464 01:12:01,065 --> 01:12:05,734 I feel if that were the case, we would see it happen more often, which is 1465 01:12:05,734 --> 01:12:07,144 why I propose this and walk it back. 1466 01:12:07,294 --> 01:12:10,474 But this is why I find it difficult to reason about, because you can make up 1467 01:12:10,924 --> 01:12:15,544 cases for why some things are adaptive and why some things aren't adaptive, that I 1468 01:12:15,544 --> 01:12:17,794 find a little bit confusing to deal with. 1469 01:12:17,834 --> 01:12:21,904 Ben Southwood: At a certain point, you could have an interest, I imagine 1470 01:12:21,904 --> 01:12:26,964 as an individual you could have an interest in dying so that your personal 1471 01:12:26,964 --> 01:12:28,775 descendants were able to survive. 1472 01:12:29,224 --> 01:12:32,734 But they would have to be- for each tier you go down, 1473 01:12:32,884 --> 01:12:34,084 there have to be more of them. 1474 01:12:34,384 --> 01:12:34,474 Aria Schrecker: Yeah. 1475 01:12:34,504 --> 01:12:37,414 Ben Southwood: At each tier for it to be worth it on a pure genetic basis. 1476 01:12:37,535 --> 01:12:37,775 Right? 1477 01:12:37,775 --> 01:12:41,075 So you need to have more than two children for it to be worth it 1478 01:12:41,075 --> 01:12:41,734 to die in favor of your children. 1479 01:12:42,234 --> 01:12:44,764 Aria Schrecker: Well, maybe just spreading the risk itself means that 1480 01:12:44,764 --> 01:12:47,564 your genes have a better chance. 1481 01:12:47,785 --> 01:12:51,194 They're in more different possible carriers. 1482 01:12:51,204 --> 01:12:53,074 So therefore it's more of us. 1483 01:12:53,140 --> 01:12:54,285 Saloni Dattani: But only half of your genes are in the- 1484 01:12:54,334 --> 01:12:54,634 Aria Schrecker: That's true. 1485 01:12:54,634 --> 01:12:54,654 That's true. 1486 01:12:54,654 --> 01:12:54,974 So actually yeah. 1487 01:12:54,974 --> 01:12:59,075 You do need the I guess, expected value for your genes. 1488 01:12:59,075 --> 01:12:59,654 Yeah yeah yeah. 1489 01:12:59,654 --> 01:12:59,915 You're right. 1490 01:12:59,959 --> 01:13:00,199 Yeah. 1491 01:13:00,785 --> 01:13:04,785 Ben Southwood: Yeah which, so but that does seem, I can kind of imagine that. 1492 01:13:05,295 --> 01:13:06,264 That's the hopeful one. 1493 01:13:06,525 --> 01:13:10,714 If it's a competition of resources one, then that makes complete sense 1494 01:13:10,714 --> 01:13:15,875 given what we've experienced where we can actually have more of everything. 1495 01:13:16,884 --> 01:13:21,394 We get longer lived, healthier, but we also are stronger. 1496 01:13:21,735 --> 01:13:22,655 We're also taller. 1497 01:13:23,035 --> 01:13:23,225 We're also smarter. 1498 01:13:23,225 --> 01:13:27,454 We seem to be getting all of the variables we care about at the same 1499 01:13:27,454 --> 01:13:28,864 time over the last hundred years. 1500 01:13:29,044 --> 01:13:30,784 Saloni Dattani: Did you know that we also have lower body 1501 01:13:30,784 --> 01:13:34,404 temperatures than in the past? 1502 01:13:34,714 --> 01:13:39,085 So the theory is that it's because of less infection and less inflammation. 1503 01:13:39,434 --> 01:13:43,624 But if you look at, there's a sample I think of spanning 50 1504 01:13:43,874 --> 01:13:47,184 years or so where our temperature has dropped, our body temperature 1505 01:13:47,374 --> 01:13:49,504 has dropped by a degree Celsius. 1506 01:13:49,984 --> 01:13:50,884 Aria Schrecker: How do we know that? 1507 01:13:51,295 --> 01:13:55,234 Saloni Dattani: From the measurements of body temperatures from decades ago. 1508 01:13:55,574 --> 01:13:55,954 Aria Schrecker: Really? 1509 01:13:56,219 --> 01:13:56,809 Saloni Dattani: Of people the same age. 1510 01:13:56,900 --> 01:13:58,059 Aria Schrecker: It's that recent? 1511 01:13:59,014 --> 01:13:59,674 Ben Southwood: That's pretty cool. 1512 01:13:59,855 --> 01:14:00,154 Saloni Dattani: Yeah. 1513 01:14:00,424 --> 01:14:05,029 Ben Southwood: I mean this, I do that inflammation, which to me is just a blob. 1514 01:14:05,189 --> 01:14:07,070 I don't really understand what's going on. 1515 01:14:07,129 --> 01:14:07,299 Saloni Dattani: It is kind of a blob. 1516 01:14:07,740 --> 01:14:12,275 Ben Southwood: Inflammation is, that's one of the most push upon things that 1517 01:14:12,275 --> 01:14:14,124 could generally deliver benefits. 1518 01:14:14,134 --> 01:14:19,894 Although as with all these things, it's great to - a lot of the stuff we talk 1519 01:14:19,894 --> 01:14:25,775 about, 80 or 90% of its benefits are on improving the worst off right now, and 1520 01:14:25,994 --> 01:14:29,344 if you are already in the healthiest 10%, then sometimes there are benefits, 1521 01:14:29,344 --> 01:14:30,495 but they're often not that large. 1522 01:14:30,495 --> 01:14:35,064 Like for GLP-1s, there might be upsides to already slim people, but I'm not sure, 1523 01:14:35,254 --> 01:14:36,534 I'm not sure they have any proven yet. 1524 01:14:36,834 --> 01:14:39,345 And I think a lot of things are like that. 1525 01:14:39,834 --> 01:14:44,134 One thing I wanted to talk about is are there groups of people 1526 01:14:44,134 --> 01:14:46,864 around the world who live a really long time that we can learn from? 1527 01:14:46,984 --> 01:14:50,035 So, I've heard of this concept, 'Blue Zones'. 1528 01:14:50,134 --> 01:14:50,744 Saloni Dattani: Oh yeah. 1529 01:14:51,094 --> 01:14:52,355 Ben Southwood: Tell me about Blue Zones. 1530 01:14:52,355 --> 01:14:53,224 Does anyone know about Blue Zones? 1531 01:14:53,254 --> 01:14:57,660 Saloni Dattani: So, Blue Zones are the idea that certain groups 1532 01:14:57,724 --> 01:15:02,374 of people in very specific places live extremely healthy lives. 1533 01:15:02,615 --> 01:15:06,355 And I think that the examples that people give are Japanese people 1534 01:15:06,355 --> 01:15:10,834 in Okinawa, people in Sardinia in Italy, and then there are a few more 1535 01:15:10,834 --> 01:15:12,125 that I don't remember the names of. 1536 01:15:13,664 --> 01:15:17,734 I have heard a lot of debunking of this idea that - there are 1537 01:15:17,734 --> 01:15:21,184 probably people who live longer, but those aren't examples of them. 1538 01:15:21,184 --> 01:15:26,764 And the ones that have been given as examples also happen to be places where 1539 01:15:26,764 --> 01:15:29,224 deaths or birth registration is very poor. 1540 01:15:29,414 --> 01:15:33,574 They just have bad administrative data, they're also poor, they correlate with 1541 01:15:33,574 --> 01:15:37,054 things that you wouldn't expect to be correlated with longer lifespans. 1542 01:15:37,264 --> 01:15:40,804 But instead they're correlated with things that imply that we don't 1543 01:15:40,804 --> 01:15:44,734 actually know how long those people have lived and that their ages are 1544 01:15:44,734 --> 01:15:46,115 inflated because of that reason. 1545 01:15:46,204 --> 01:15:49,464 Ben Southwood: So I shouldn't start eating the diet of a Sardinian. 1546 01:15:49,714 --> 01:15:51,094 Aria Schrecker: Yeah, the Mediterranean diet. 1547 01:15:51,094 --> 01:15:51,424 Fake. 1548 01:15:51,934 --> 01:15:52,204 Fake. 1549 01:15:52,454 --> 01:15:54,304 Ben Southwood: The Mediterranean diet might be fine, they 1550 01:15:54,304 --> 01:15:55,314 eat that in lots of places. 1551 01:15:55,514 --> 01:15:57,635 But if you are in Sardinia, they have a kind of cheese 1552 01:15:57,645 --> 01:15:58,684 that has maggots coming out. 1553 01:15:59,824 --> 01:16:00,184 Aria Schrecker: Yum. 1554 01:16:00,894 --> 01:16:01,334 Ben Southwood: Live maggots. 1555 01:16:01,355 --> 01:16:01,775 Saloni Dattani: That's horrible.. 1556 01:16:01,834 --> 01:16:02,074 Aria Schrecker: Yeah. 1557 01:16:02,919 --> 01:16:05,705 Saloni Dattani: So I wouldn't take that recommendation. 1558 01:16:08,285 --> 01:16:11,744 The funniest one of this that I saw was, so there are a bunch of 1559 01:16:12,464 --> 01:16:15,574 historical centenarians, people who've lived over a hundred years old. 1560 01:16:15,875 --> 01:16:20,115 And there was one example of this guy, Pierre Joubert or something, 1561 01:16:20,115 --> 01:16:24,875 some French guy who supposedly lived 113 years in the early 20th century. 1562 01:16:25,564 --> 01:16:27,094 And it turned out it was two people. 1563 01:16:27,094 --> 01:16:30,814 It was a man and his son who both had the same name and people 1564 01:16:30,814 --> 01:16:32,375 just assumed it was the same guy. 1565 01:16:32,554 --> 01:16:34,074 Ben Southwood: There must have been a bunch of people in the middle who 1566 01:16:34,074 --> 01:16:35,494 were like 'no, this one's a child'. 1567 01:16:36,449 --> 01:16:38,680 But by the end, you know, a 60-year-old in 1904. 1568 01:16:38,980 --> 01:16:39,589 Saloni Dattani: I think it was 1569 01:16:41,619 --> 01:16:44,824 that they found his birth certificate, it was actually his dad's birth 1570 01:16:44,824 --> 01:16:48,015 certificate, and then they found his death certificate and that was the son's death. 1571 01:16:48,085 --> 01:16:48,994 And then they were oh, it's- 1572 01:16:49,144 --> 01:16:52,399 Ben Southwood: I feel quite bad for him now because at significantly younger 1573 01:16:52,399 --> 01:16:55,149 than 113, everyone thought he was 113. 1574 01:16:55,919 --> 01:16:57,514 'Wow, you are really decrepit, man.' 1575 01:16:57,589 --> 01:17:01,189 Saloni Dattani: This goes to your point where people seem much 1576 01:17:01,189 --> 01:17:02,650 older than they were in the past. 1577 01:17:02,650 --> 01:17:06,290 And that I can imagine would also cause this confusion where people 1578 01:17:06,290 --> 01:17:08,980 are like 'Oh wow, this person must be over a hundred years old'. 1579 01:17:09,119 --> 01:17:11,019 And it's no, they're 80. 1580 01:17:11,074 --> 01:17:12,185 Ben Southwood: I'm 25. 1581 01:17:12,254 --> 01:17:14,154 I just smoked a thousand cigarettes every day. 1582 01:17:14,794 --> 01:17:18,950 Aria Schrecker: I once watched a video of I think it was teenagers 1583 01:17:18,950 --> 01:17:23,399 answering some - it was school students and it was maybe 1940 - something. 1584 01:17:23,709 --> 01:17:27,449 And I was surprised at how much like adults all the teenagers looked as well. 1585 01:17:27,639 --> 01:17:31,989 So I do really think that those teenagers were experiencing being 1586 01:17:31,989 --> 01:17:34,249 in their twenties, biologically. 1587 01:17:34,449 --> 01:17:38,539 Ben Southwood: It was a more people had to go and work at such a young age. 1588 01:17:39,399 --> 01:17:43,069 And even if they didn't have children super early, they got married early. 1589 01:17:43,369 --> 01:17:43,699 Saloni Dattani: Right. 1590 01:17:43,770 --> 01:17:46,069 They also smoked more, did more drugs. 1591 01:17:46,069 --> 01:17:46,199 Ben Southwood: Drugs. 1592 01:17:46,410 --> 01:17:46,819 Yes. 1593 01:17:47,130 --> 01:17:47,420 Yeah. 1594 01:17:47,659 --> 01:17:48,259 Did more drugs. 1595 01:17:48,259 --> 01:17:50,669 Now here's an interesting one, it seems to me drugs were basically 1596 01:17:50,929 --> 01:17:51,839 all invented in the 1960s. 1597 01:17:54,619 --> 01:17:55,459 There weren't people doing- 1598 01:17:55,459 --> 01:17:58,749 Saloni Dattani: Didn't people do drugs during World War II? 1599 01:17:58,804 --> 01:18:01,434 Aria Schrecker: Didn't Victorians hang out in opium dens? 1600 01:18:02,359 --> 01:18:02,779 Saloni Dattani: That's true. 1601 01:18:02,809 --> 01:18:05,119 Ben Southwood: So the drugs thing is interesting because it's definitely 1602 01:18:05,119 --> 01:18:08,074 true from all the information I've ever seen, we all know everyone smoked a lot. 1603 01:18:08,474 --> 01:18:13,139 But also people drank a lot more, people can't internalize this, that people in 1604 01:18:13,139 --> 01:18:16,939 the 1970s were just constantly drinking, and earlier you get earlier than that. 1605 01:18:17,590 --> 01:18:19,699 Saloni Dattani: Medieval people would only drink beer basically. 1606 01:18:19,779 --> 01:18:22,139 Ben Southwood: People drank, but people drank on the way to work. 1607 01:18:22,290 --> 01:18:23,979 A lot of the pubs would open in the morning and they went 1608 01:18:24,159 --> 01:18:25,159 into a pint on the way to work. 1609 01:18:25,230 --> 01:18:27,019 Saloni Dattani: I will take a contrarian take on this. 1610 01:18:27,019 --> 01:18:30,559 That might have been good, because their water might have been so unclean. 1611 01:18:31,820 --> 01:18:34,919 Ben Southwood: You far enough, I'm thinking of Victorians or something. 1612 01:18:34,919 --> 01:18:35,420 Saloni Dattani: Even then. 1613 01:18:35,729 --> 01:18:35,900 Ben Southwood: Yeah. 1614 01:18:35,900 --> 01:18:37,070 Okay early twenties 1615 01:18:37,070 --> 01:18:38,839 - Aria Schrecker: They could boil water and drink tea. 1616 01:18:39,619 --> 01:18:39,859 Saloni Dattani: Could they? 1617 01:18:40,759 --> 01:18:41,299 Aria Schrecker: Well, I assume so. 1618 01:18:41,959 --> 01:18:42,679 Ben Southwood: They did, sometimes. 1619 01:18:42,679 --> 01:18:43,279 Saloni Dattani: They had coal. 1620 01:18:43,639 --> 01:18:45,219 Ben Southwood: Tea and beer were considered to be safer, 1621 01:18:45,250 --> 01:18:45,994 because they were both boiled. 1622 01:18:46,174 --> 01:18:47,234 Saloni Dattani: There are a bunch of bacteria that still, 1623 01:18:47,359 --> 01:18:48,889 or viruses that still survive. 1624 01:18:49,519 --> 01:18:52,180 Ben Southwood: But the beer was safer because it was boiled as well, 1625 01:18:52,180 --> 01:18:53,509 so it's gonna be the same as tea. 1626 01:18:53,690 --> 01:18:54,040 Saloni Dattani: Yeah. 1627 01:18:55,110 --> 01:18:56,089 Ben Southwood: But be, we used to drink a lot more. 1628 01:18:56,209 --> 01:19:00,169 I think the drugs question is interesting because I just don't know, I'm always 1629 01:19:00,179 --> 01:19:03,150 surprised when I discover people in the past were abusing drugs heavily. 1630 01:19:03,320 --> 01:19:06,650 And so I do know, you know, everyone knows that Blitzkrieg, the 1631 01:19:06,650 --> 01:19:09,819 Nazis, they were all using speed as they invaded Eastern Europe. 1632 01:19:10,079 --> 01:19:13,400 Think in the sixties the Beatles were using speed when they were going 1633 01:19:13,400 --> 01:19:15,660 and playing concerts in Hamburg. 1634 01:19:16,080 --> 01:19:18,240 I don't have a sense of how much drug use there was. 1635 01:19:18,670 --> 01:19:24,749 But it does seem maybe, all the people talking about drugs, like cocaine, 1636 01:19:25,160 --> 01:19:26,059 that definitely wasn't a big thing. 1637 01:19:26,989 --> 01:19:28,299 Saloni Dattani: Wasn't there that thing, what was the treatment 1638 01:19:28,400 --> 01:19:29,769 for depression back then? 1639 01:19:29,769 --> 01:19:30,730 Wasn't there something? 1640 01:19:30,984 --> 01:19:32,389 Ben Southwood: There definitely were people using heroin and 1641 01:19:32,389 --> 01:19:34,749 cocaine in medical contexts, right? 1642 01:19:35,269 --> 01:19:37,300 In the 1900s, there were certain rich people getting obsessed. 1643 01:19:37,599 --> 01:19:39,679 Aria Schrecker: If the Bell Jar is anything to go on, I guess historical 1644 01:19:39,679 --> 01:19:42,259 treatments for depression were insulin. 1645 01:19:42,789 --> 01:19:43,439 Saloni Dattani: Oh yeah. 1646 01:19:43,579 --> 01:19:43,969 Aria Schrecker: Yeah. 1647 01:19:44,150 --> 01:19:45,349 Saloni Dattani: Insulin shock therapy. 1648 01:19:45,349 --> 01:19:45,799 Aria Schrecker: Yeah. 1649 01:19:45,799 --> 01:19:47,840 Which seemed a very strange, it was a really strange- 1650 01:19:48,889 --> 01:19:50,179 Saloni Dattani: put someone into a coma. 1651 01:19:50,240 --> 01:19:50,629 Aria Schrecker: Yeah. 1652 01:19:51,199 --> 01:19:52,669 Saloni Dattani: So people didn't really know what caused it. 1653 01:19:53,309 --> 01:19:53,669 Ben Southwood: Yeah. 1654 01:19:54,309 --> 01:19:56,129 We're still not that good on that one. 1655 01:19:56,129 --> 01:19:56,649 That's one. 1656 01:19:56,680 --> 01:19:59,359 It would be nice to get people to get some improvements on. 1657 01:19:59,539 --> 01:20:04,859 Saloni Dattani: So I have a question for Aria and you, what is the long-lived 1658 01:20:04,999 --> 01:20:08,809 strategy by animals that you would take if you wanted to live longer? 1659 01:20:09,320 --> 01:20:10,639 Out of the ones that we talked about? 1660 01:20:11,794 --> 01:20:12,934 Ben Southwood: I'm obviously a lobster guy. 1661 01:20:13,214 --> 01:20:13,964 Aria Schrecker: You're a lobster guy? 1662 01:20:14,069 --> 01:20:14,969 Ben Southwood: I'm a lobster guy. 1663 01:20:15,184 --> 01:20:17,650 Aria Schrecker: You wanna get bigger and bigger, and bigger, and bigger? 1664 01:20:17,650 --> 01:20:18,249 Ben Southwood: Bigger and bigger. 1665 01:20:18,769 --> 01:20:21,504 I come back here in a hundred years and I'm taking up almost the entire room. 1666 01:20:21,504 --> 01:20:25,894 I have to keep working really hard to get good money for food. 1667 01:20:26,044 --> 01:20:27,484 My food consumption is so high. 1668 01:20:27,984 --> 01:20:28,664 That's what I would like to do. 1669 01:20:28,849 --> 01:20:31,070 Aria Schrecker: You have to have an IV drip of just straight 1670 01:20:31,119 --> 01:20:32,674 glucose so you can keep growing. 1671 01:20:32,824 --> 01:20:33,064 Ben Southwood: Yeah. 1672 01:20:33,064 --> 01:20:36,464 I would have to be eating extremely nutritionally valuable foods 1673 01:20:36,754 --> 01:20:39,264 constantly, like a big dinosaur. 1674 01:20:39,274 --> 01:20:39,284 Saloni Dattani: Aria? 1675 01:20:41,379 --> 01:20:44,309 Aria Schrecker: I think, I feel a big kinship with the naked mole-rats. 1676 01:20:44,959 --> 01:20:48,399 I feel like we're basically already eusocial creatures as humans. 1677 01:20:49,639 --> 01:20:53,464 I go into the office and I guess I'm working on my computer doing the very 1678 01:20:53,464 --> 01:20:57,544 important magazine making part of the social order and everyone else 1679 01:20:57,544 --> 01:21:00,034 is doing all the other parts of the social order that come together. 1680 01:21:00,244 --> 01:21:03,634 And I guess there isn't a queen naked mole-rat that's shoving me to get 1681 01:21:03,634 --> 01:21:06,879 me to do work, but you know I feel I'm basically already like them. 1682 01:21:07,089 --> 01:21:10,264 I also feel like I have no personal temperature control already anyway. 1683 01:21:10,269 --> 01:21:10,539 Saloni Dattani: Okay. 1684 01:21:13,049 --> 01:21:13,839 Aria Schrecker: I'm just most of the way  there. 1685 01:21:14,114 --> 01:21:18,724 Saloni Dattani: I would take the last one, which is turn myself back into a fetus. 1686 01:21:19,144 --> 01:21:19,924 Start life again. 1687 01:21:20,974 --> 01:21:21,924 Ben Southwood: How many times would you do it? 1688 01:21:21,924 --> 01:21:23,074 You could just keep, do it forever? 1689 01:21:23,074 --> 01:21:23,524 Saloni Dattani: Why not? 1690 01:21:23,734 --> 01:21:23,824 Ben Southwood: Yeah. 1691 01:21:23,824 --> 01:21:27,244 I suppose if you could do that then when you were feeling like 'hmm. 1692 01:21:27,634 --> 01:21:31,749 I think it's, I think it's time guys', you're on your deathbed and your death 1693 01:21:31,749 --> 01:21:35,419 bed is actually your regeneration bed, and then a little baby comes and family. 1694 01:21:35,579 --> 01:21:36,009 Saloni Dattani: That would be great. 1695 01:21:36,559 --> 01:21:37,519 Ben Southwood: That would be fantastic. 1696 01:21:37,654 --> 01:21:39,534 Aria Schrecker: Would you consider that to be like you continuing 1697 01:21:39,534 --> 01:21:41,084 to live if you just respawned? 1698 01:21:42,394 --> 01:21:44,584 Saloni Dattani: I think I would see it as another chance at a 1699 01:21:44,704 --> 01:21:46,984 different experience at life. 1700 01:21:47,104 --> 01:21:49,444 Aria Schrecker: I would take it over what we currently have. 1701 01:21:49,474 --> 01:21:49,714 Saloni Dattani: Right. 1702 01:21:50,044 --> 01:21:52,574 Aria Schrecker: But I'm not sure I would really consider- I think I 1703 01:21:52,574 --> 01:21:55,774 consider that just a cheap way of last minute creating one more child. 1704 01:21:55,914 --> 01:21:56,044 Saloni Dattani: Got it. 1705 01:21:56,444 --> 01:21:59,134 Well, so I don't necessarily want to live longer. 1706 01:21:59,134 --> 01:22:00,444 I just don't wanna die. 1707 01:22:00,814 --> 01:22:02,954 So this feels like it addresses that problem. 1708 01:22:03,784 --> 01:22:07,474 Ben Southwood: Do you think that getting into a teleporter and then you come out 1709 01:22:07,474 --> 01:22:10,894 the other side is death or teleportation? 1710 01:22:11,674 --> 01:22:15,379 Saloni Dattani: I think it's teleportation, because I've watched 1711 01:22:15,394 --> 01:22:19,194 enough Harry Potter movies where they do that and they don't, philosophically 1712 01:22:19,400 --> 01:22:21,560 - Ben Southwood: But you wouldn't know from the outside because they've 1713 01:22:21,560 --> 01:22:21,980 got copies of all the memories. 1714 01:22:23,239 --> 01:22:24,079 Saloni Dattani: They seem fine. 1715 01:22:25,440 --> 01:22:28,245 Aria Schrecker: I think copying all the memories is getting - I genuinely 1716 01:22:28,245 --> 01:22:32,045 think the only people who think the teleporter thing is death are people 1717 01:22:32,045 --> 01:22:35,735 who have thought about philosophy, they've done the architecture thing 1718 01:22:35,735 --> 01:22:38,825 with philosophy basically, where they've looked at too many buildings and now 1719 01:22:38,825 --> 01:22:40,135 they can only make ugly buildings. 1720 01:22:40,325 --> 01:22:42,215 They've thought about philosophy too much and they can only 1721 01:22:42,215 --> 01:22:44,235 have clearly false opinions. 1722 01:22:46,320 --> 01:22:50,165 You're gonna announce yourself as a 'It's death; continuity of 1723 01:22:50,165 --> 01:22:51,875 consciousness is very important thing'. 1724 01:22:52,385 --> 01:22:56,355 Ben Southwood: I don't have a theory about it just on the pure intuition, 1725 01:22:57,785 --> 01:23:02,165 I think that it's easy to see that if you put me to a teleporter, but 1726 01:23:02,165 --> 01:23:07,144 for some reason it delayed for a month, or, the two person where I 1727 01:23:07,144 --> 01:23:08,285 actually come out of the first one. 1728 01:23:08,355 --> 01:23:10,355 There's another one there, the other one there isn't me. 1729 01:23:10,445 --> 01:23:13,595 And it's independence of irrelevant alternatives according to normal 1730 01:23:13,595 --> 01:23:15,065 standards of what is me and what isn't. 1731 01:23:15,065 --> 01:23:15,855 Aria Schrecker: The other one there is you. 1732 01:23:17,144 --> 01:23:19,734 Ben Southwood: I think that, my personal view is that if you think about it 1733 01:23:19,759 --> 01:23:24,070 enough, then you're committed to, I die every time I go to bed in the evening, 1734 01:23:24,940 --> 01:23:26,440 and since I'm not committed to that. 1735 01:23:26,569 --> 01:23:28,369 Aria Schrecker: Or like, I've died during the creation of this podcast. 1736 01:23:28,559 --> 01:23:28,679 Ben Southwood: Well, yeah. 1737 01:23:28,889 --> 01:23:29,860 every second I die. 1738 01:23:30,480 --> 01:23:30,499 Aria Schrecker: Yeah. 1739 01:23:30,889 --> 01:23:34,309 Ben Southwood: Given that it doesn't, I think that it would be silly to 1740 01:23:34,399 --> 01:23:37,999 go to that conclusion, but anyway, I don't know that, I'm not a philosopher, 1741 01:23:37,999 --> 01:23:39,534 so my opinion's probably very bad. 1742 01:23:39,534 --> 01:23:43,149 Saloni Dattani: I wonder if there's a final way to live longer, which is, it 1743 01:23:43,159 --> 01:23:47,609 sort of reminded me of how astronauts have, they age very quickly, right? 1744 01:23:47,629 --> 01:23:49,190 When they're out in outer space. 1745 01:23:49,530 --> 01:23:49,629 Ben Southwood: I didn't know that. 1746 01:23:49,759 --> 01:23:50,809 Aria Schrecker: I thought it was the other way around. 1747 01:23:50,809 --> 01:23:53,569 I thought general relativity meant they were zooming around so 1748 01:23:53,569 --> 01:23:55,279 fast that they age much slower. 1749 01:23:55,279 --> 01:23:57,209 Ben Southwood: That would only get, that would only give them a few seconds- 1750 01:23:57,619 --> 01:23:58,989 Aria Schrecker: Oh yeah, it doesn't give much. 1751 01:23:59,409 --> 01:24:01,374 Ben Southwood: Saloni's talking about normal aging, aren't you? 1752 01:24:01,934 --> 01:24:02,244 Saloni Dattani: Yeah. 1753 01:24:02,244 --> 01:24:02,574 Yeah. 1754 01:24:03,094 --> 01:24:04,014 it does something. 1755 01:24:04,014 --> 01:24:06,704 And it just means their muscles, their organs are weaker, et 1756 01:24:06,704 --> 01:24:07,184 cetera, because of gravity. 1757 01:24:07,269 --> 01:24:09,919 Ben Southwood: Well that's why we need to have our inflatable space station Saloni. 1758 01:24:10,179 --> 01:24:12,764 So that we can have artificial gravity so they can live longer. 1759 01:24:13,054 --> 01:24:13,264 Saloni Dattani: Yeah. 1760 01:24:13,264 --> 01:24:14,945 So is there a way to do the opposite? 1761 01:24:15,484 --> 01:24:16,905 Ben Southwood: Or put us under more gravity? 1762 01:24:16,905 --> 01:24:18,335 Aria Schrecker: More gravity means more life? 1763 01:24:19,985 --> 01:24:21,015 I guess we've never tried it. 1764 01:24:22,115 --> 01:24:25,204 Ben Southwood: My intuition is that well, have we not ever tried it? 1765 01:24:25,294 --> 01:24:26,845 Aria Schrecker: There are parts of the world where gravity, 1766 01:24:27,074 --> 01:24:28,884 because the shape of the earth. 1767 01:24:29,014 --> 01:24:33,034 Yeah, so you experience less gravity if you are at the top of the Himalayas. 1768 01:24:33,544 --> 01:24:34,144 Saloni Dattani: Is that true? 1769 01:24:34,384 --> 01:24:34,714 Aria Schrecker: Yeah. 1770 01:24:34,714 --> 01:24:35,074 because you're 1771 01:24:35,894 --> 01:24:39,164 - Ben Southwood: It's like an orange, the earth and the middle is the furthest 1772 01:24:39,164 --> 01:24:41,994 down, so you get the most at the poles. 1773 01:24:42,454 --> 01:24:43,984 Saloni Dattani: Does it, do we speed up? 1774 01:24:44,974 --> 01:24:45,194 Aria Schrecker: Yes. 1775 01:24:45,194 --> 01:24:45,294 Yeah. 1776 01:24:45,294 --> 01:24:46,084 You will speed up. 1777 01:24:46,619 --> 01:24:47,854 Ben Southwood: You'll be spinning much quicker, because 1778 01:24:47,854 --> 01:24:49,054 we're going around our axis. 1779 01:24:49,414 --> 01:24:49,444 Saloni Dattani: Oh. 1780 01:24:50,134 --> 01:24:53,384 Ben Southwood: But to be honest, you're way past my physics here. 1781 01:24:53,384 --> 01:24:56,494 I'll sound like a total idiot when someone watches the podcast. 1782 01:24:56,544 --> 01:24:56,754 Aria Schrecker: Yeah. 1783 01:24:57,004 --> 01:24:57,414 Ben Southwood: Okay. 1784 01:24:57,494 --> 01:25:02,150 I think that we have tackled all of the animal longevity based topics 1785 01:25:02,150 --> 01:25:03,259 that we're ever going to tackle. 1786 01:25:03,319 --> 01:25:04,069 Aria Schrecker: I think so, yeah. 1787 01:25:04,779 --> 01:25:05,709 Ben Southwood: Thank you very much, Saloni. 1788 01:25:06,230 --> 01:25:10,369 Thank you very much, Aria, by the time this podcast comes out, there will be 1789 01:25:10,369 --> 01:25:16,459 an article by Aria in Works in Progress issue 22, telling you in much more detail 1790 01:25:16,459 --> 01:25:20,809 and with all the facts sourced and all the numbers accurate and remembered 1791 01:25:21,049 --> 01:25:25,400 because they're written down about longevous animals and their traits.