Radiolab - Cheating Death

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

In this episode, Maria Paz Gutiérrez does battle against the one absolute truth of human existence and all life… death. After getting a team of scientists to stand in for death (the grim reaper wasn’t available), we parry and thrust our way through the myriad ways that death comes for us - from falling pianos to evolution’s disinterest in longevity. In the process, we see if we can find a satisfying answer to the question “why do we have to die” and find ourselves face to face with the bitter end of everything that ever existed.Special thanks to Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips, Steven Nadler, Beth Jarosz, Anjana Badrinarayanan, Shaon Chakrabarti, Bob Horvitz, John K. Davis, Jessica Brand, Chandan K. Sen, Cole Imperi, Carl Bergstrom, Erin Gentry -Lam, and Jared Silvia. This episode was made in loving memory of Dali Rodriguez.EPISODE CREDITS - Reported by - Maria Paz GutiérrezProduced by - Maria Paz Gutiérrezwith help from - Alyssa Jeong Perry and Timmy BroderickOriginal music and sound design contributed by - Maria Paz Gutiérrez and Jeremy Bloomwith mixing help from - Arianne WackFact-checking by - Emily KriegerOur newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [e-mail] support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Heads up, today's show does include a couple of curse words. So anyway, here we go. Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radiolab.

From WNYC. See? Yep. You there? Hello. Hey. Hi. How you doing?

This is Radiolab. Yeah. You there? Hello? Hey, hi. How you doing? This is Radio Lab. I'm Latif Nasser. And today, um, a desperate, crazy, possibly feudal, definitely foolhardy soul searching journey from our producer, Maria Paz Gutierrez. OK, so Latif, have you seen a movie called The Seventh Seal?

Oh, that's the Ingmar Bergman movie from like the, I don't know, 50s? Yeah. I think I fell asleep during that movie if I'm being honest. Okay, fair. When the land broke, the sea fell into the sea. But presumably you made it through the opening? I think so. The sky stood up in silence.

So just to jog your memory, the film begins with this scene of this night who's just landed on a beach after spending years abroad fighting this brutal bloody war in the Middle East, the Crusades. And he looks at, he has the face of someone who's seen countless friends die, has himself narrowly avoided death multiple times.

And he's finally made it back to the shores of his homeland. He's packing up his stuff when he looks up. And he sees this figure, tall and pale and dressed in black from head to toe, who is, of course, death. And death is just like... Are you ready? Are you ready? And in that moment, as death inches towards our knight to take his life, our guy, our knight, he stands up, he looks at death right in the eye and says... Wait a minute! Wait!

You're playing chess, isn't it? What if... What if we play a game of chess? Chess? Yeah, a game of chess. Youess? Yeah, a game of chess. You can endon'tjevar a fikli, garen ja. If I win, you spare my life, and if I lose, you do your thing. And death is like...

Javre reti. Yeah, let's do this. So the rest of the movie is basically just this game. In between moves, our knight, he goes home, he sees his wife again. He's eking out the last bits of whatever life has to offer before the end. It take it he loses the chest. Of course he does. And why are you telling me any of this?

Because seeing this night just reminded me that I'm gonna die one day. I mean, I've always thought about death. My dad died when I was a year old, and so from a young age, I always had this sense that life, it can be cut short at any moment. And my whole life, I've been trying to make sense of why it is that we're given this thing to have it just kind of like be taken away. Hmm. So, so for me when I saw this night maybe it seems pointless but I was just like, that's

this, it felt like this beautiful compelling act of resistance and it made me think, I want to do that. What? I want to do that what I Want to challenge death So that is what we're gonna do today here. I am challenging death to a chess match of sorts a duel you could say Okay

to The death. Um, so obviously death was not available. Okay. Too busy ending lives left and right. Okay, alright. So I called a team of people who could stand in for death or play on death's behalf. Newslet! Couple of ecologists.

We're all gonna die. An evolutionary biologist. Death is inevitable. An astrophysicist. Death is just simply part of being a human. And an anthropologist. Everything dies. Okay, so why have we assembled all these very morbid people together?

All these scientists, they know death, they know how it works. And so I just asked them if I was to play a game of chess with death If if I could do my version of that chess match from the movie What would death's moves be like how would death come for me and My thought is maybe there's a move that I can make to like outwit and basically death Maybe there's a move that I can make to like outwit and basically be death. Okay, alright. Okay, I mean I think I know how this is gonna go, but let's let's do it. Hell yeah. So, death's first move, courtesy of...

Give me a little one, two, three evolutionary bio gerontologist Steven Ostad One, two, three, six, nine, twelve, fifteen ecologist Roberto Salguero-Gomez Just call me Rob, if you call me Roberto, I think it's my mother telling me off and anthropologist Gabriela Contreras Yeah, of course, hi is basically you know when you wake up and you leave your house you might get hit by a car

shit happens if you could be run by a bus, go for a bit. You could have a safe fall on your head. Or you could be killed by a cold snap, by heavy storm. Any stochasticity in your life, and then you're gone. And the longer you live, the more chance there is of something awful happening to you. Because that's how life works. The more chance there is of something awful happening to you. Because that's how our life works. All these accidents, they're death's little minions.

They're kind of just like waiting for us, waiting for me to slip and fall so that I can eventually meet my maker. I love how you slip between the us and the me. You're gonna die with me, Lutton! Ha ha ha ha! So my first move in the game is like, that's fine. I can be careful. I can just stay home.

I can use a water purifier. Employ a food taste tester in case there's any poisons that happen to fall into your food. I can just wear a helmet. Wear 10 helmets. You could wear like a styrofoam padding, just like around your body at all times. Even random things like earthquakes.

Yeah. I downloaded an app that will give me two minutes to leave the building in case everything is collapsing around me. You're gonna make sure your phone never runs out of battery, I guess, or? I got a backup. Okay, okay.

Great. Of course. battery I guess or... I got a backup. Okay, you got... Okay. Great. But, um... Of course. My experts told me that even if I bubble-wrap myself, instead of my apartment, watching my earthquake app, that doesn't protect me from... Disease. We can get influenza.

We could get diabetes. We could get asthma. Diseases that might just kill me outright, or kidney failure, cancer or heart disease. Might just set me up for death's next move, which is wear and tag to play the long game. You deteriorate as you get older, right? Yeah. Let me give you an example.

Do you own a car? I own a car. Awesome. Can I ask you how old is your car? 2015. 2015. So, getting there, right? Yeah.

You know, with time, there are some things that you need to take it back to the car workshop for to fix. Because parts wear out. For instance, the heart, it's a muscle. You know, muscles eventually wear out. One of those essential organs gives out. Your deads. But people have heart transplantsplants people have kidney transplants

Who cares yes indeed? That's what I was saying you are on my side welcome welcome to the dark side Yeah, okay, let's just do some transplants you could you can in theory replace parts But if you allow me the biological analogy, there'll be some organs within the car that once they fail You'll be like, you know what? I'm done and that's that with this car. For instance, our brains. I mean, maybe parts of it. Okay, but if you lost your memory, would you be the same person?

This all of a sudden got a lot less abstract. Right. Okay. Yeah, I guess... Not? I don't know. I'm not sure. I mean, I guess. Not. I don't know. I'm not sure.

I mean, I don't want to sound too negative about this, but at some point that starts to go even in the healthiest among us. You know, it's, I think of it like bending a tree branch. It'll bend, it'll bend, it'll bend, and finally it breaks. And that's what happens with aging. Okay, so how are you going gonna buttress this tree branch? What are you gonna do against aging? Well, look, today we live way longer than we have ever before,

in part because we eat better and have modern medicine. And so I'm just gonna dial in the perfect lifestyle. Like, what if I just eat an absurd amount of vegetables and fruits? Only superfoods. Eat avocados and bran flakes for every meal. I'm definitely drinking plenty of water. Great, right? No smoking. You cannot smoke. Sorry.

Not smoking is a good start, but it's still not going to stop you from dying. Yeah, no, money, money, but ageing. Everyone told me that trying to fight off aging with diet or vitamins is just not going to cut it. There are literally hundreds of theories about why we age, and they involve all these different things that I barely understand, but whatever, I'm going to name off. They include genomic instability Talamir atrition epigenetic alterations loss of pro proteostasis Degregulated nutrients and saying mitochondrial dysfunction. Okay. Okay. Okay. I I have no idea what you're talking about

No, no, no, there's more cellular senescence Okay, I got it. I'm also exhausted and and it sounds like what you're saying is like, brand flakes are not going to hit any of these things. Yeah, I mean, the point is aging. It's like a house of cars or the most intricate domino line thing. And to this day, scientists haven't been able to pin down exactly why we age, but what they do know is aging happens down at the most fundamental level of all living things. Yes. It all boils down to what's going on inside your cells.

Yeah, like literally just by existing, your cells are getting damaged. In particular, I learned that the thing that's being damaged is the DNA inside your cells. Your genetic material, your essence. That little coil of molecules that tells your cells what to do. The information of you. The DNA is being damaged 10,000 or more times a day. Right now. Right now.

Okay, great. So great. Like, you just walk outside on any given morning You are exposed to sunlight UV radiation Know that UV starts to damage your cells. That's damaging the DNA in your skin cells great or just Take a breath pollution Little bits of random stuff in the air damages the DNA inside our lungs cells Little bits of random stuff in the air damages the DNA inside our lung cells. Exactly, exactly.

So you're under this vast assault. But that seems beatable. What? No, it really doesn't. It really does not sound beatable. Yes, I mean, I'll just take my helmet and my good diet and my vitamins and I'll move to somewhere with clean mountain air, like some remote part of the world. I'll move to Antarctica. Okay.

And then I'll find a cave to keep out of the sun. No, I... And then I'll just live there safe. Perfect plan. I thought so. No. Still, unfortunately, you have to keep eating to stay alive. So, eating, my experts tell me, down at the cell level.

That's really just a fire. A fire inside us? Yeah. Just like a fire? Like take a campfire. That is just oxygen having a chemical reaction with the wood. Yeah, right. And inside each and every single one of our cells,

we're combining... Oxygen and carbohydrates, basically, to give energy, but just like fire has side effects like smoke and sparks and all, our metabolism, that's damaging our cells. And damaging the DNA, the essence of you. You know, I'm not happy about that, but it's a fact.

So the way Gabriela and Steven laid it out for me is that the instructions for the cells over time become jankier and jankier. So our cells over time become more and more messed up, which then messes up our organs. Every part of us, it all begins to fall apart. Ultimately that does us in. And so, well, I can't really remember where we're going with this, but yeah, you have to eat. By the way, do you have any questions? No, no, I mean, well, just one thing

that I feel like I noticed, the idea that the sun is like the source of all our energy that we need to survive, and then yet literally damages us. And then eating is the way that we get that energy into our system, and that that actually is damaging us too while we're doing that. Like it's like, this feels like a kind of a, I mean, you're.

We're not done yet. I mean, maybe you are, but I'm not because as I was researching the DNA damage stuff, I discovered that there are parts of the DNA and parts of the cell that are on my team. Wait, like how, how so? There are actually like these little enzymes that can go in and take a damaged part of your DNA and remove it and recent the size the original part to get it back to working the way it was before all the damage. Oh, all right.

Okay. So I was like, why can't the repair team just go in there and take care of all this damage from the sun and the air and whatever? Um, yeah, well, there's really no way that we can fix all of that damage with 100% fidelity. Like, think of a jumper, right? You've got like a knitted jumper and it's perfect. Okay. Bear with me on this one.

Maybe you like catch it on a branch, right? And like one piece of thread becomes unraveled a little bit. But that's okay because you know how to sew. So that's your cells repairing themselves. You've just repaired like an issue. Great. But then, you know, you accidentally walk through a really thorny bush and now you've got like 10 threads that have been pulled out. And actually each of those threads is connected to more threads and now you've got holes. And maybe they do get repaired, but just not quick enough. So by the time one hole is patched up,

there's already another one. And now you've got this kind of jumper that's a big mix of like holes and repaired pieces. And eventually your jumper's like not a jumper anymore. It just stops working as a jumper. So you die. And at this point, that's when I realized that our bodies, that my body is not even on my team,

is actually on death's team. Because as we get older, the body takes the energy away from the repair processes. And when you do that, of course, things don't get repaired. Believe it or not, Stephen says, in an evolutionary sense, this whole decaying, deteriorating, dying thing was the plan all along. You know, the way our bodies are built now is a consequence of human evolution in an

environment that for most of that time was very, very different. Without sanitation or modern medicine, people didn't even make it into old age. No, 300,000 years ago, most people were dead by the time they were 60. A lion would get us, there would be a drought, there would be a fire. We'd eat some food that was tainted. Good times, the glory days. Yeah, pretty much. And if that is the case, then from an evolutionary standpoint, the idea is to reproduce before the inevitable accident happens to you.

So, Stephen says, you put less energy into fixing the damage in your body, and you put it towards reproduction. And of course, if you all, if you allocate all of your resources to reproduction, you've got none left for you. And that's why it's really important that we don't confuse like being evolutionarily successful with health. Evolution doesn't care if you are healthy. It cares if you are healthy enough to reproduce. At that point, how are you feeling, Latif? Well, just like there's conflicting priorities here in the design. It's like the thing everybody and me as well gets pissed about, like phones, it's like

planned obsolescence, like they make the thing so that it will break, so that you'll buy a new one. That's the capitalism version, but the evolution version is like, clear this thing out of the way, so we'll get the room for the new models. Yes. I mean, people are variable. We all have different inheritance of genes. We all survive in different environments. But 100 years is about as long as we can last, given the way our current body is built. I mean Maria Paz, like from the accidents to the eating and the fire inside and the

air you're breathing and the DNA damage and like even evolution is against you here. This feels like a checkmate to me. Fine, I mean sure, it's a checkmate for you and me, but I am here on behalf of humanity, Lutith, including your children. My children? Yeah, maybe future generations don't have to put up with any of this.

Maybe they don't have to die. I mean, I think my kids are fine, MPG. Well, tell you what, we're gonna take a break now. So you have some time to go talk to them and you can ask them, do you wanna die? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha The end of everything. That'll be great. Okay. Lutthiff Radio Lab here today with Maria Paz Gutierrez on her increasingly quicksotic effort to outdo the one absolute truth of all human existence and all life, which is of course death.

Hey, yep, that's me. And before the break, you were going to take the game, I don't know, into the future to see if you can win on behalf of my children and or all future generations. Right. So a quick recap might help. Remember Howard, death experts told us that evolution was like, I don't care if your DNA gets all damaged and you die because I just want you to have babies.

Yeah, that was that was sobering. Well, those babies get their fresh start, in part, because the body has a kind of trump card cell. The stem cell. A stem cell is a cell in your body that has DNA, the instructions for making and being you that has been, in a sense, protected from the damage of living life.

It hasn't made any copies of itself. being and being you that has been, in a sense, protected from the damage of living life, it hasn't made any copies of itself. Some stem cells have the potential to become a fresh version of basically any other cell in your body. A liver cell, a skin cell, a toe cell, an eyeball cell, whatever. Love me some stem cells. How about this new at six breakthrough in reversing the signs of the aging? Researchers say that's not right. So in just the last several years, scientists have started to figure out how to use stem cells.

Scientists have rejuvenated the skin cells taken from a 53-year-old woman. To replace cells that have been damaged or even turn regular old cells back into stem cells. Really? Yeah. To your point, I mean, it sounds like science fiction. I mean, he's taking these. Mostly in lab mice at the moment. We're restoring vision. And we don't know where this is going.

But by 2050, we're going to be able to restore a lot of things that get damaged. But there are some big name labs working on this stuff for humans. And they're being backed by big money. Jeff Bezos is spending billions. The Amazon founder reportedly made a significant investment in a company called Altos Labs. Jeff Bezos is spending billions. The Amazon founder reportedly made a significant investment

in a company called Alto Slaps. So eventually this could be a way to beat the whole DNA cell damage thing that seems to be at the root of aging. It's going to happen. It's like asking the right brothers, are we gonna fly? Well, of course we are. It's just a question of when.

But I mean, like isn't this one of those things where someone's always saying this is 20 years away and 20 years away and it's always 20 years away and then it never happens? Yeah, sure. Maybe. I mean, I don't know. But what I do know is that I'm on team maybe, maybe one day. And just to make this maybe a little bit more concrete, I will say that there are animals in the natural world already out there that do this kind of thing. Really? Yeah. You ever hear of the immortal jellyfish? No. Oh my god.

I figured you would. This is a bit shocking. OK. All right. OK. But tell me, tell me, tell me. So the immortal jellyfish is this tiny little jellyfish. It's like the size of your pinky nail tiny.

OK. It's translucent. Has these like tiny little tentacles. Cute. It's translucent, has these like tiny little tentacles. It's so cute. It's originally from the Mediterranean, but has sense spread all over. It's a bit of an invasive species. I mean that's whatever I write. Anyway, but if you're immortal it feels like that's inevitable. Anyway, keep going. And this jellyfish, it can have baby jellyfish like a normal sea creature would.

But also, it's different because when it experiences stress, it can trigger this developmental trick. If you try to kill it, it does not die. Instead... The cells in its body can revert back to the baby versions of themselves. And then this clump of polyps just grows back into being a new jellyfish that's genetically identical to its original self. It's funny, like the image I have when you describe that is like sneaking up on like a 90 year old

and scaring them from behind and then they turn into a baby. That's pretty much a superpower. I love that. That's amazing. And it can just do that over and over as many times as it wants? So they haven't actually studied the jellyfish for long enough to know how many times it can pull the trick. Maybe not forever. And before anyone tries to jump in and destroy my hope I am aware that of course the immortal jellyfish could always just get eaten by a Turtle or crushed by a rock, but still this jellyfish does feel like a glimmer of hope Like there could be some kind of genetic loophole to fight back against the DNA and the cell wear and tear like Finger fingernail sized loophole here. Yeah. Why can't we just be the jellyfish?

You want to be a mortal jellyfish? Cool. Awesome. I hope you get reincarnated as an immortal jellyfish so that in that way you can live for a long time and have no recollection of that life before. This is Chris Shell. He's an urban ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley. If you would like to do that, that's cool. But his point is if you're constantly trying to revert back to the baby, blobby version of yourself, it's not like you'd be able to take your memories with you. So at that point, it wouldn't even be clear in what sense you would even be you. It feels like you're just a clone or a facsimile

of what you used to be and I don't think most human beings would opt into that life. And talking to Chris kind of flipped this whole little game I've been playing on its head. Let's be blunt this equation for life includes death including what it would even mean for me to win. Let's play this out. So, starting now, everything from here on out is immortal. All of the things in your world that currently exist. Cannot die. Death is off the table, right? Mm-hmm. There are a bunch of folks cheering and being like, Can I die?

Death is off the table, right? There are a bunch of folks cheering and being like, I'm never gonna die. Okay, cool. Now think about the ways in which individual animals or people or plants or bacteria or whatever is living dies. Take cicadas. They explode into these huge swarms and then after some singing and some sex, they die. And there on the ground are the shells they've left behind. Nutrients that can be repurposed and shifted as energy for other organisms.

Which helps the forest grow. And that's just one bug. as energy for other organisms. But in this reality, nothing is dying anymore. That means that that energy, it's gone. So if we're not getting new energy for new things to grow, we may be at stasis, y'all. That means potentially no new babies, no new life, no change in that system. Because if everything is immortal, then why would you end up having selection for certain traits to allow for those organisms to be better suited for the environment? Why does it matter? They're not gonna die anyway.

Christa's in a world where nothing dies. Life essentially halts at a standstill. And yeah, everything is alive to exist in this new reality, but it doesn't change. It doesn't morph. It doesn't evolve. It isn't dynamic. The extravagant, extraordinary biomes that we currently have that exist on this planet, they all stop. It would be as if we were living in a photograph of the world as we know it, just frozen in time. Living in a world like that gets really boring

really quickly to the point where why did we want to have immortality in the first place when the world that we envisioned having immortality in no longer exists. I don't think I want to win this game anymore. This sounds worse than death actually. I don't know. Really? You would take the frozen photograph

well it's just that in the face of death like in the face of a moment where the life of someone you love has suddenly been taken from you or Even just like having to face the moment where your own life, where all the things that you've done and dreamed and schemed and built might just blink out of existence, in the face of that, I might honestly consider the comfort of being able to live in a photograph. comfort of being able to live in a photograph. But it's frozen, it's a plateau. Like you'll never, everything will be so mundane

and same that it'll be like we're all just gonna be on cruise control forever and there won't be any highs or lows or like there won't be any, like for me, I don't know, that doesn't feel like life. It's the change that's really important to being alive. So this is Jan 11. She's an astrophysicist

and she happens to subscribe to your point of view. Right now in talking to you, my thoughts are changing and I'm experiencing that and I'm watching the passage of time by a clock changing. And when I told Jana about my game, this match that I'm playing against death, she pretty much immediately hit me with what felt like the ultimate move,

because according to her, eventually the entire universe probably has to die. This march towards death is a physical law of the universe. And that idea comes from the second law of thermodynamics. So what you need to understand is that the most fundamental fact about living things is that they are orderly arrangements of stuff. We're born in some sense in an extremely ordered state. Each part of us is in its place

interacting with other parts in very orderly ways. I wake up, I think things. I know who I am. That's a very ordered state. I have a look a particular way. I don't look wildly different tomorrow. My face isn't scrambled. That's what it means to be me, to be alive. The problem, Janice says, is the second law of thermodynamics. Mm-hmm, yeah. Which says that in general, over time, things get more and more disorderly. On average, entropy, which is a measure of disorder, will always increase. Things will always tend to get more disordered.

And Jenna says that this move toward disorder or decay or deterioration is just a basic fact of the passage of time. Like, you can literally see it. If you look at a flower and you watch a movie where a rotten flower lifts itself back up, becomes incredibly perfect again instead of little pieces on the ground. You know you're watching that backwards.

Like the felt experience of time, that just is decay, deterioration, death. But we can make things more orderly. We can fix things that are broken, like every day. New orderly little living things are born Right, but creating that life for that order like it requires work Like all living things on earth if you trace it back They get their energy to live and grow and make new life from the Sun, right? Right, but but if you zoom out you'll notice that overall But if you zoom out, you'll notice that overall, disorder is still increasing.

Like, sure, you created something orderly here on Earth, but all the while, the sun is burning up its fuel. All of its light and heat and energy is spewing out across the solar system, spreading out further and further. And the sun will eventually run out of thermonuclear fuel, and it will kind of cool and turn redder and distend and bloat out and vaporize the inner planet.

Do we have a timeline for when the Sun is going to die? It's a few billion years. OK. Planning a time. But eventually, even if we found some way to travel near the speed of light to another star system and find another planet and, you know, set up colonies or whatever we could do, we could hop, you know, skip around the galaxy trying to keep going. It doesn't matter.

Those new planets, those new stars will eventually burn out too, until... There are no more galaxies, no more black holes, no more stars, no more people, no more planets. Nothing ordered. Just random motions of particles, but they're all so far apart that they can't even notice each other. That is a universe which cannot experience change, and where there cannot be things like thoughts, and there cannot be creatures with minds that have thoughts. In some sense the universe has gotten so cold that it's effectively, it's effectively died.

Okay that's your checkmate, that's the final checkmate. Yeah, yeah it feels that way. It sounds like you need a drink right now. I need so much in my life, I am empty. That's your checkmate. That's the final checkmate. Yeah, yeah, it feels that way. It sounds like you need a drink right now. I need so much in my life. I am empty. But can I make a confession? Sure.

Um, I figured I'd lose. Um, but you know how the knight from the seventh seal is playing chess against death, but really he's just buying himself time so that he can go home and see his wife. Right, right. This whole time, I was hoping not so much that I would win, although that would have been nice. But truly, I was just hoping I'd be able to find a satisfying answer to the question of why. Why, why do we die? Or, or like, why do we have to die?

Jeez, why do we die? That's so interesting you're talking about death today. I just lost both my grandparents. Oh my gosh. One after another. And as I was reporting out this story, I asked philosophers, musicians, friends, and even people on the street. What the fuck?

Why do we die? That's a very common question to ask when you're in the kind of existential crisis you're having. Oh. I think we bad because... Because it's hard to exist forever. Because we have to.

Because of our life. I mean, what's the alternative? We get old, we get tired, and we wither away. Everybody. There's no way out of this. And they said all kinds of different things. I could imagine myself dying of old age, like after a big family meal where everyone's gathered and I ate way too many oysters and lobster and I drank champagne even though I'm like 98

and amidst of my sleep, my body just gave up. Time to move on to the next. No more problems, no more worries, just peace forever. I mean, when is your time? Is your time? Yeah, everything has come to an end. The good things, the bad things. Now, you can do about that. I am surprised I'm alive today.

I've never expected to live this long. In the middle of the death right now. But listening back, why do I think we die? That's a good question. Maybe it was a good question. They're all saying the same thing. I have no fucking clue. Why do you ask why all the time?

Just, you know, get on with it. You know, the why is the motherfucker. You would never figure it out. Why? Because it's not meant to be figured out. You just gotta come to the understanding of what life is. And what is life? Life is death.

Life is death. And so do you understand why? Do you kind of understand why we died? No. Yeah. Just something that happened? Yes. Maria, you asked this question, Noah, full well, you weren't going to get a straight

answer from anybody, right? I know you did. And even in this conversation, it's as if we are trying to put words that help us control our own understandings and conceptions of death. And really at the end of the day death doesn't care. That does not care. It doesn't care if you understand the process of death or what it is or how important it is. It's going to happen regardless. Everyone will die. Honestly, life is the anomaly. Right? The majority of other planets in our solar system and in other solar systems

across the vastness of the universe does not have life. We are the exception. We're not the rule. Death is a neutral state, right? Having things be in nothingness is the neutral state. We are surrounded by a vast ocean of blackness. So, just take, take solace in the fact that in the very small, very, very rare percentage of life succeeding, we made it, y'all. We, we, we, we made the sweepstakes. Be happy that we made the sweepstakes might as well enjoy it while we got it and and Eventually when the universe dies, who knows it may be reborn in a different form with different function With different rules. We just don't know. Yeah Let's see. How can I say this? Um There is another possibility for immortality We have to remember just like our star turned out not to be the only star,

our planet turned out not to be the only planet, our galaxy turned out not to be the only galaxy, our universe might not be the only universe. We don't understand the laws of physics well enough yet to be able to confidently state if this is a fluke. Like if a universe that includes life is a fluke. Or if it's the opposite that it's plentiful. Maybe there are other universes.

They're disconnected from ours and have histories and futures that are disconnected from ours. We can't point to them in space or in time. But theoretically, if there's a multiverse, we're just one in a vast collection of other universes. And some of those universes will not be able to support life, but we can imagine that some will. So, potentially, even after our universe dies. There is life out there, even if it's not us. Life is plentiful in the multiverse.

It's like life never really wins the game against death, but... Death never really wins either. Yeah. This episode was reported by Maria Paz Gutierrez and produced by Maria Paz with help from Alyssa Jung Perry and Timmy Broderick. Sound and music from, once again, Maria Paz Gutierrez as well as Jeremy Bloom, mixing help from Arianne Wack. Special thanks to Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips, Steven Nadler, Beth Jarrett, Anjana Badrina-Ryanan, Shaun Chakrabarti, Bob Horvitz, John K. Davis,

Jessica Brand, Chandan K. Sen, Cole Impiri, Carl Bergstrom, Aaron Gentry-Lam, and Jared Silvia. This episode was made in loving memory of Dalí Rodriguez. This is Radiolab, on Latif Nasser. Thanks for listening. Hi, I'm Hazel and I'm from Silver Spring. Radio Lab was created by Chad at Belmont and is edited by Storm Wheeler. Lulo Miller and Latif Nasser are co-hosts. Dylan Keith is our director of Sound is Land. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler,

Ikehti Foster-Keese, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz-Gutieres, Sindhu Naimisam Fadan, Matt Kilti, Annie Mekouan, Alex Nisen, Sara Kari, Sarah Sandbach, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. Our back trackers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krueger, and Natalie Middleton. Thank you. Hi, I'm Ram from India. Leadership support for Radio Labs. Science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Science Sandbox, a Simon Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.