Something You Should Know - How to Improve Your Luck & A Much Better Way to Die

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Starting point is 00:00:27 Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, the pesticides used on produce. Are they safe or are they not? Then, how to create your own luck. Because doing so is absolutely necessary. There's been a lot of interesting research, and what it shows is that people that really hit it big in terms of wealth or in terms of fame, yes, they had the necessary talent and skills, but they also had the big break, and they had luck go their way.

Starting point is 00:01:00 And that's the other crucial ingredient. Also, why you really need to stop and listen to the birds singing outside. And the very latest developments on aging and living longer. People who study the biology of aging have found it striking that some of the age-old advice, exercise, eating moderately, and getting enough sleep, affect many of the major pathways of aging. All this today on Something You Should Know. This episode is brought to you by Melissa and Doug. Wooden puzzles and building toys for problem solving and arts and crafts for creative thinking.

Starting point is 00:01:38 Melissa and Doug makes toys that help kids take on the world. Because the way they play today shapes who they become tomorrow melissa and doug the play is pretend the skills are real look for melissa and doug wherever you shop for toys something you should know fascinating intel the world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome. I want to start today on Something You Should Know with something I've wondered about for the longest time.

Starting point is 00:02:17 As I understand it, the difference between organic produce and conventionally grown produce is growers of conventional produce can use chemical pesticides. Organic growers cannot. But then we hear frequently that the levels of pesticides on conventional produce are low and that the more dangerous pesticides have been banned, so there's really nothing to worry about. Still, a lot of people buy organic because they don't want pesticides on their food.

Starting point is 00:02:48 So which is it? Are pesticides on conventionally grown produce nothing to worry about? Or not? Well, Consumer Reports just did an investigation and published a report, and it says that, well, that there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that pesticides posed significant risk in 20% of the foods they looked at. These included bell peppers, blueberries, green beans, potatoes, and strawberries. One food, in fact, green beans, had residue of a pesticide that hasn't been allowed to be used on vegetables in the U.S. for over 10 years.

Starting point is 00:03:26 And imported produce, especially from Mexico, was particularly likely to carry risky levels of pesticide residue. And there was good news. Pesticides presented little to worry about in nearly two-thirds of the produce they tested, including nearly all of the organic ones. An example of how tricky this gets, though, is that only 11 out of the 330 watermelons they tested had high levels of a pesticide. But they had really high levels, and there's no way for you as the consumer to tell.

Starting point is 00:04:01 I suggest you read this report, particularly if you have children in the family or are or plan to get pregnant. There's a link to the report from Consumer Reports in the show notes. And that is something you should know. Just how lucky are you? When you think about your life and how luck and chance have played a role, was it good luck, bad luck, maybe a little bit of both? You see, luck is a very big player in our lives, whether you realize it or not. And when you pay attention to how luck works in your life, you can actually create more good luck in your life,

Starting point is 00:04:43 which you're about to hear about from Mark Robert Rank. He is a professor of social welfare at Washington University in St. Louis and author of the book, The Random Factor, How Chance and Luck Profoundly Shape Our Lives and the World Around Us. Hi, Mark. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thanks a lot, Michael. Great to be with you. So I have always thought that luck is such a big force in almost everybody's life and a force that

Starting point is 00:05:12 nobody really pays attention to. And so I think it's important, but I'd like to know why you think it's important. Well, I think actually a lot of times people don't place a lot of emphasis on luck and chance. You know, as I talk about, I think it really has a profound influence, both in terms of how our lives play out and in terms of the world around us. And there's a lot of things that we can learn from, I think, a greater appreciation of the role of randomness, luck, and chance. So explain the role of randomness, luck, and chance. So explain the role of randomness, luck, and chance, because as you say, people don't really take it into consideration much, don't think about it much. So how do they affect us?

Starting point is 00:05:56 History has been shaped by many chance and luck and random kind of events in quite profound ways. The natural world around us, when we think about natural selection and all kinds of sort of processes is also very much that the element of randomness is very important in terms of those processes. And then again, in terms of just, you know, the way that our lives play out, there's just a lot of randomness, luck, and chance. And I should say, you know, the way that I kind of got into this was an earlier book of mine that was looking at the American dream. And in that book, I interviewed 75 people from all walks of life, and I was interested in their life stories and what had happened to them. But one of the things I didn't anticipate was over and over people would say things like,

Starting point is 00:06:45 you know, if I hadn't run into that person, or if this hadn't happened, or if I hadn't been at the right place at the right time, or the wrong place at the wrong time, my life would be much different than it is now. And I started thinking about that. And it actually, this is a kind of a phenomena that really has not been studied very much in the social sciences, which is where I'm coming from. So in many different ways, it's really, really significant, significant impact on their life and that it's happened several times. Absolutely. Absolutely. So if you think about, take for example, who your significant other is.

Starting point is 00:07:46 I mean, I'm almost it's almost universal. People will say, you know, it was kind of a chance encounter. We were at a party or this person was there and I was there or this kind of thing. And now certainly your life would would take a different path if that hadn't happened. And we don't know what what that would look like. But the specifics in your life are very much influenced by randomness. There's certainly currents that push your life in a certain direction. And as a sociologist, I study things like social class and race and gender. And those are all really important. But within those currents are a lot of ripples of randomness. And that's the way I like to think about, you know, the world is not just all luck and chance, but it's not all

Starting point is 00:08:30 just a fait accompli. It's how these two things interact with each other. But because by its very nature, luck and chance are luck and chance, they happen when they happen, That's kind of the beginning and the end of it. And then there's not much more to do other than maybe to say, so since luck and chance play a big role, get out there and have more luck and chance encounters. Yeah, well, one of the things that I talk about is what are some of the lessons that we can learn from appreciating that the world we live in is very random and that there is a lot of luck and chance. And I think there are many, many different lessons. And one of them is to keep your eyes open for opportunities that may come your way. You know, there are things that happen that you have no control over, but what do you do when they come across your plate? What do you do with those opportunities?

Starting point is 00:09:28 And so that's one of the things that, again, it's not just a fait accompli. It's an interaction between things that happen that may be beyond your control. But then how do you react to those kinds of things? So it's a very dynamic process that I think is really interesting. So understanding that these chance events, these chance meetings, these lucky things that can happen really on a daily basis, what do we dealing with poverty. So if you look at over a long period of time, it's interesting that actually most Americans at some point in their lives will experience at least one year in poverty. Now, why does that happen? Well, it happens because over a long period of time, kind of bad things can happen to people. A family can split up, you could lose a job,

Starting point is 00:10:25 you can get sick, a pandemic can happen, and all those kinds of things might occur over a long period of time. A lot of people say, oh, well, that will never happen to me. But actually, as I said, about three quarters of all Americans at some point in their lives will experience a year in poverty. So that's certainly one of the implications from thinking about that, you know, there is randomness and there is bad luck out there. And how can we deal with that? And how can we address that? Yeah, because although you know it may be coming, it's impossible to know what it is that's coming.

Starting point is 00:10:54 You know, like, you know, something's going to go wrong with your car one day, but you don't know if it's going to be the brakes or the, you know, the tires. You don't know what it is, but something's going to go wrong. Exactly. Exactly, exactly. So I think that that's one among many lessons that we can learn from this sort of greater appreciation in terms of how randomness may affect our lives. But is there any sense that the people who do something different with the luck that comes their way, good or bad, have a better outcome because they do something? So a lot of times people will say to me, they'll say, you know, it's interesting,

Starting point is 00:11:35 you're doing a book on luck and chance, but you know, I make my own luck. What that really means is what we were talking about a minute ago, which is when things happen to you out of the blue, what do you do with that? How do you react to that? What's your response to that? And that's what a lot of times people mean when they say things like, I make my own luck. You know, Pasteur had the saying, luck favors the prepared mind. So that's something that definitely people can think about.

Starting point is 00:12:04 Folks that are listening here can think about in terms of their own lives. Well, it's interesting that, and it must be hard for you to study luck because luck happens in unpredictable ways. If it was predictable, it wouldn't be luck. If it's a system, if it's a managed outcome managed outcome then it's not luck that's the kind of the definition of luck and it's interesting how people say they know how to be lucky often in gambling but if you have a system to be lucky then then i don't think it's luck then it's just a managed outcome here's a way that people are often fooled by luck. And you're probably aware of this,

Starting point is 00:12:47 and our listeners here are probably too, which is called the gambler's fallacy. And what that is, it's applying probability. So we know what a probability is in terms of flipping a coin or the ball in roulette landing on red or black. It's 50-50, basically. But when you look at a small sample of occurrences, it may not be 50-50. And so what happens is there's been really

Starting point is 00:13:14 interesting research looking at casinos. If you're playing roulette and the ball has landed on black four, five, or six times in a row, most of the bets now will be placed on red. Now, it's still only 50-50 that it might be black or red, but people are thinking, oh, it's overdue. It has to come out red or black because it hasn't been that way. That's not true. The overall odds, if you do it a thousand times, will be 50-50. But if you only spin the wheel 10 or 20 times, it could be quite different than that. And so that's something that you can learn. When you think about probabilities and chance, these are some of the lessons that you can learn. So don't be fooled by thinking that your luck may turn around if you've had a spell of good luck or

Starting point is 00:14:01 bad luck. It may, it may not. Over a long period of time, it probably will. But in terms of a short period of time at the casino, it may very well not. We're talking about how important randomness and luck are in how your life goes. And my guest is Mark Robert Rank, author of the book, The Random Factor. This is an ad for better help. Welcome to the world. Please, read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you, and have a nice life.

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Starting point is 00:15:17 So Mark, do you think you can say, because you've mentioned several times, that random things happen to people? That meeting on the train, the random occurrence that happens that turns into something. So therefore, you might want to come to the conclusion that so you should do a lot more of that because luck will come your way as opposed to staying home and watching television where you're not out interacting with the world where that's where the luck is good and bad if you're home watching tv you're just home watching tv that's really interesting mike that's a really interesting point i hadn't really thought of that but yeah you're right if you're out there there's more opportunities for interesting things to happen to you there's also the other side is there's more opportunities for interesting things to happen to you. There's also, the other side is there's more opportunities for bad things to happen to you.

Starting point is 00:16:12 So that's kind of the other side of the coin here. But absolutely, you know, another sort of example I give is, which is related to what you're bringing up, is the more irons you have in the fire, the more likely you are to have something good happen to you. And so, you know, like, for example, when I send out things, you know, publications at various places, the odds are at any point that it's going to be rejected. But if I send that out to eight or 10 places, the odds are probably pretty good that one or two of them will accept what I'm sending them. And so that's that idea of increasing your chances, increasing

Starting point is 00:16:51 your odds by having more irons in the fire. And that's, I think, a really valuable lesson for people to take away with. And sadly, that lesson has been well learned by people who send spam and things. They'll send millions of them because they know the more they send, the more likely somebody's going to fall for it. That's right. That's right. Wingway or J.K. Rowling, they had their first manuscripts rejected like 10, 15, 20 times before it was finally accepted. Harry Potter was rejected by 11 or 12 publishers before one finally accepted it. And that shows you that in some sense, being persistent is really important. And how many really well-known authors just gave up,

Starting point is 00:17:46 you know, or that would have been a well-known author, that would have been a well-regarded author. They just gave up because it was like, it was too much. And so one of the things is, look, you shouldn't pursue things to the end of the earth, but you should give it a pretty fair shot before you give up on something something because it probably will be the case that it at some point will be um will be uh you know a positive outcome but there's a difference between persistence and luck yes but you can by being persistent you can increase your odds in terms of having good luck i think that's one of the ways of taking advantage of randomness that's out there and using it to your you know and

Starting point is 00:18:26 using it to your to your advantage but it's interesting you know when you when you're playing roulette it truly is luck when you're trying to get published it may be luck but it also you it has to be good like you can't just scribble with a crayon on 200 pages and just send it out to millions of people and say, well, I got a lot of irons in the fire. It still has to be good. Absolutely. And so things like talent and skill are very important. But the way I like to think about it, and this is true with entertainers and musicians, it's a necessary, but it's not a sufficient condition. You have to have, yes, you have to have the ability, you have to have the talent, it has to be a good product. But just

Starting point is 00:19:11 because it is, doesn't mean that you're going to be successful. I've interviewed lots of entertainers and musicians who are extremely talented and never got the big break. And there's been a lot of some really, as I said before, really interesting research that has looked at this. And what it shows is that people that really hit it big in terms of wealth or in terms of fame, yes, they had the necessary talent and skills, but they also had the big break and they had luck go their way and that's the other crucial ingredient so having talent and skills is necessary for getting ahead but it's not sufficient but there are people that consider themselves to be lucky or there are people who consider themselves to be very unlucky or we see people and and look at their life and say god you've've had just a slew of bad luck.

Starting point is 00:20:06 And you wonder, well, why is that? Why isn't it more spaced out? Why doesn't everybody get a little bit of everything? Why do some people just get nailed and others seem to just live a charmed life? Yeah, that's a really, really interesting observation. And we often want the world to reflect a sense of justice, that what you put into something should reflect what you get back. There's a sense of balance here. Well, randomness does not abide by that. It may balance out, it may not balance out. And in fact, I would argue that, and this is based on some other work that I've done,

Starting point is 00:20:47 that what can often happen is good luck can follow good luck and bad luck can follow bad luck. So if you think about the lottery of birth, where we are, you know, first of all, we'll talk about randomness. The fact that you and I are born, the odds of it are, you know, trillions to one that we're even here, but we're born into a certain circumstance, and some are born with more advantages than others. If you're born with advantages, there's more likely that you will see some of the good breaks in life than if you're born into poverty, where you're more likely to see some of the bad breaks. And this is what's known as cumulative advantage or disadvantage. And that is that things do not necessarily even out, that the rich may get richer and the poor get poorer. And in terms of good breaks and bad breaks, you often will see that play out in this way. Well, I just think it's fun to think about all the luck in your life,

Starting point is 00:21:41 good and bad. I mean, when you look back and see the things that have happened and how so much of it is just luck, chance. There's a lot of positives in terms of thinking about that the world does have a lot of randomness and chance. One of the things that I talk about is how boring would this world be if everything was predictable? What a boring place that would be. The fact that you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, that's the spice of life. That's what gives life its energy. The other thing that I talk about that I think is a very positive thing is that with chance comes hope. And hope is something that is very important in how we live our lives. We often need to have something that we hope for, that we look

Starting point is 00:22:35 forward to in the future. It may not happen, it may happen, but the hope is there. And that's what gives life its real kind of energy and sort of drive. And I think that those are very important. But again, going back to if the world was totally predictable, this would be a really boring place. And so, you know, chance and luck and randomness give the spice to life. Well, I've always believed if you're going to make your own luck, you have to get out there, meet people

Starting point is 00:23:05 be in situations but people don't often think of that as luck they think of that as well see i'm out there i'm doing things it's me it's i'm in charge of my life but you could you could go out and do those very same things and not have good results if it weren't for a little bit of luck. That's exactly right. And, you know, you've got to be in the game. You have to be playing the game for things to happen. If you're sitting at home, yeah, no, nothing is going to happen. But if you're out there, lots of things could happen to you. And so, yeah, I think that that's definitely right. And that's kind of that same idea that I mentioned about having irons in the fire and, you know, having things out there. And some of those will may come through in your favor.

Starting point is 00:23:55 You know, it's interesting. I think a lot of the reason that people don't have a lot of irons in the fire is they're afraid of what other people will think. That maybe they're not really qualified. Maybe they shouldn't try because people will think they're not qualified. Or maybe they shouldn't go for that job because they don't really have the exact experience that they asked for or something. And they don't want people to think they're desperate. Like the worry of what other people will think, I think, stops people from trying to be lucky. I think you're exactly right. You know, somebody once said, you know, to be an actor, you have to

Starting point is 00:24:30 have the height of a rhinoceros. You have to be able to take rejection. And that's true in life in general. You know, look, I, you know, you and I, we do different things. We're, I'm sure we, both of us face rejections all the time. But we also have things that are positive that come out of that. And so you, you gotta be able to sort of put that aside and say, look, not everybody's going to vote for me or not everybody's going to give me a good review or whatever it may be. But, you know, I'm going to be out there. I'm going to do my best.

Starting point is 00:25:04 I'm going to put this out and let's see what happens. And that's, again, what's interesting about life. Well, it's a fun topic to talk about because you can actually, you know, maneuver your own luck to some degree. And it's just interesting to understand how it works. I've been speaking with Mark Robert Rank. He is a professor of social welfare at Washington University in St. Louis. And the name of his book is The Random Factor, How Chance and Luck Profoundly Shape Our Lives and the World Around Us. And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you, Mark. Appreciate you coming on.

Starting point is 00:25:41 This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter hospitality on your way there. All Porter fares include beer, wine, and snacks, and free fast-streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats. And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times, relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather. Visit FlyPorter.com and actually enjoy economy. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives,

Starting point is 00:26:24 and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person

Starting point is 00:27:06 Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. How long will you live? I think that's a question we've all asked ourselves. And we all have at least a general idea of the things that are in our control to help ensure that we live a long time. But what is being done scientifically to better understand the aging process and the things that ultimately will cause us to die?

Starting point is 00:27:40 And then how is that being translated into a fight against aging that will allow us to live longer and healthier? Well, that's what Nobel Prize winning molecular biologist Venky Ramakrishnan is here to discuss. Venky is author of a book called Why We Die. Welcome. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hello. Pleased to be here. Okay, so you're a Nobel Prize winning molecular biologist who studies aging. Explain what you do every day. The work I do, which is

Starting point is 00:28:13 about how proteins are made and how that production of proteins is regulated by the body, is very closely connected with aging. Because when those processes break down, they're one of the main causes. They're one of the fundamental causes of aging. It's not just we that age. Every living thing dies. I mean, I think isn't that part of the definition of any living thing is that it will die. If it can't die, it isn't really alive, right? Yeah, absolutely. I'll give you two two i'd say two things about that one is although all living things are made of the same

Starting point is 00:28:54 material they're all made of dna and proteins and you know cell membranes and things like that they they have vastly different lifespans. For example, a butterfly or an insect might live only for days. And at the other end, you have some whales and sharks that live for a few hundred years. Tortoises can live for 200 or more years. And that means there's probably a Galapagos tortoise around now that was around when Darwin first observed them 150 years ago. That to me is amazing. So why is it that although we're made of the same thing, we all have such different lifespans? That's one of the interesting questions about the field. But I want to go beyond that. It's not just living things that age and die.

Starting point is 00:29:59 Aging and death is a property of complex systems. For example, companies have a growth phase, a plateau, and then decay and death. No company lasts forever. You could even say the same thing about cities. And while they're working, nobody imagines that this city is not going to exist one day. But history is full of cities that were flourishing hundreds of years ago and today are in ruins. So I think aging is more generally a prop a property of complex systems and do you see do you believe do you hope that one day we will be immortal that we'll live forever we won't age because that just seems well it seems impossible i personally believe that if not impossible, it's extremely difficult. I would put it in the same category as our ability to settle in a different galaxy or even on Mars. There's no physical law that says we can't colonize Mars or we can't travel to a different galaxy.

Starting point is 00:31:03 But in practice, the difficulties are enormous. It's impossible today. And we don't know when it'll be possible. And I would put this idea of being immortal in that same category. But no matter how much you slow down the aging process, and we've, I think it's safe to say we have slowed it down. I mean, people seem to be healthier longer than they used to be. We've slowed down the aging process.

Starting point is 00:31:32 But eventually, time takes a toll. Things wear out. Things die. Houses die. Cars die. Blenders die. And people die. That's one way of looking at it. But that's not entirely true. die, cars die, blenders die, and people die.

Starting point is 00:31:45 That's one way of looking at it, but that's not entirely true. For example, if you had a car, well, I'll give you a better example. I have a bicycle. My bicycle is from 1978. And over the course of time, I have replaced just about every part on that bicycle. So it's still this, I think of it as the same bicycle, but it's been constantly replaced and renewed. And you might do the same thing with a car. You could replace the engine, you could replace the wheels, you could replace almost every piece of the car. So you could say yes there's wear and tear but if you're able to regenerate it

Starting point is 00:32:29 replace it with new parts then you can keep it going forever and the question is whether it's the same thing or not whether the same car if you've replaced everything about it and many people would argue if you replace it very gradually, then it really is the same car. Perhaps a better analogy is an orchestra. Let's say the New York Philharmonic. Individual members come and go. They grow old, they retire, or sometimes they die. Conductors come and go. But the New York Philharmonic survives. It's still the New York Philharmonic. It keeps on playing. And so there are different ways of looking at what it is about immortality. Now, the question is, can we replace everything about

Starting point is 00:33:20 ourselves? At the moment, we're nowhere near it. Is anyone even trying? I mean, is that a science-y thing that people are attempting to do, even though it may be very preliminary? There are scientists who are trying to reprogram cells to try and make older cells go backward in time so that they can regenerate worn-out tissue, regenerate aging tissue. That's all working at one level, but it's not working at the level of the entire individual. People have done this in mice. For example, they've done some sort of cellular reprogramming in mice, and they found that by some criteria, the mice look younger. They have younger fur. They have biomarkers that they measure, which suggest that they've actually stopped aging or become younger. But no one knows how long this is going to last. No one knows about the long-term safety. And one of the things about us is the brain. No one has shown that we

Starting point is 00:34:37 can regenerate tissues in the brain because the brain doesn't regenerate very well. Most of our neurons don't turn over. So there's promise there, but we're a long way from the kind of breakthrough that will say, okay, we can sort of rejuvenate someone. Other than having conversations like this about wouldn't it be wonderful or wouldn't it be interesting if we could, why is this important? Because it seems, as you just said, we're far, far away from being immortal. And it seems more like medicine kind of tries to squeeze a few more years out of us, you know, by transplanting this or giving medication for that. But you're talking about something else that seems almost science fiction so why are we

Starting point is 00:35:29 talking about this great question and that's because most of the what I call the rational side of the aging community is not about living longer it's if we understand the causes of aging we might be able to do something that will allow us to live healthier lives. Why should you think that aging is the thing to tackle? Well, take almost every disease that's a major risk factor today. For example, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia, like Alzheimer's. All of those diseases are directly correlated with aging. The older you are, the greater your risk for getting one of these diseases. So a lot of people in the biology community have asked, wait a minute, if aging is increasing the risk of each of these completely different diseases,

Starting point is 00:36:34 maybe we should be tackling aging. Maybe we should be understanding the causes of aging to try to see if we can slow it down to the point where you're protected against some of these horrible, debilitating diseases of old age. There's a debate about whether doing so will actually extend our lives, or whether it means that we will simply live a bigger fraction of our lives more healthily and then suddenly, you know, have a system-wide collapse and die. Now, that seems very unlikely. This idea that we're healthy all our lives and then suddenly collapse, it's called compression of morbidity. It means you take those years of morbid life and compress them into just a few years. But that's the advice we hear a lot. I mean, people I interview here often say

Starting point is 00:37:34 that a healthy lifestyle, you know, diet, exercise, don't smoke, that doing those things will help you live a long life and a healthy life and then compress those sick years that lead to death at the end, compress those, and you go pretty quickly. That's already kind of in the conversation. So there must be some evidence, some research, that there is a way to do that, to compress those sick times at the end. It seems like it's being done already. The one thing that suggests that there's something there is the study of centenarians.

Starting point is 00:38:13 So someone named Tom Pearls, who heads up the New England centenarian study in Boston, has been studying centenarians for many, many years. And one thing he's found is, and this is particularly true of what he calls super centenarians. These are people who live to be over 110 or semi super centenarians who live to be 105. These people spend a very short time in poor health. So they're healthy and independent for

Starting point is 00:38:48 most of their lives, and suddenly they decline and die. So somehow these people have solved that problem of compression of morbidity. And I think understanding the causes of aging and perhaps studying these centenarians what is special about them what's special about their lifestyle their genetics that might provide us clues on how to live a healthy life while we're alive well that's always the concern is that you can if you extend somebody's life but you're just extending the misery at the end uh the what's the point as opposed to, you know, I want to be 30 longer, not 130 longer. Absolutely. And that is a real dilemma. And I have to admit, it is not a solved problem because virtually everything we've done about some of

Starting point is 00:39:41 these diseases of aging, for example example heart disease or high blood pressure virtually every one of these things has prolonged our life but we have not extended the fraction of our lives that is actually healthy so every western country is full of care homes with people who are not doing so well. They're alive, but they have lots and lots of health problems. So that is a serious problem, how to extend healthy life and compress the part that we live in poor health. In this conversation of aging and living longer, there's always this element, this undercurrent of, but you never know. You know, you could get hit by a bus tomorrow or you could no control over that there are some things it seems that that people can do now that we know really helps longevity in fact people who study the biology of

Starting point is 00:40:58 aging have found it striking that some of the age-old advice that we've been given, and the three things that I think are key, are exercise, eating moderately, and eating healthily, and getting enough sleep. These three things affect many of the major pathways of aging. And so the advice we may have gotten from our grandmothers is actually true. Of course added on to this is stress, but of course exercise and sleep actually help to reduce stress. So they're all related. So there are things we can do. So what is your hope? What is the message? What is it you want people to take away from this?

Starting point is 00:41:50 Well, what I'd like people to take away from this is several things. First of all, there is no physical law that limits our lifespan. We live to be, the oldest person recorded is a hundred and twenty two nobody else that we know of has even exceeded a hundred and twenty so given our current biology we do have a limited lifespan but there's nothing to say that we cannot alter things about ourselves that might extend it beyond 120 or 122. That is an amazing thing. It's not around the corner.

Starting point is 00:42:35 It may not happen for hundreds of years. We may need a lot more to understand a lot more before that happens. But just knowing that to me is amazing but knowing the causes of aging allows us to tackle aging at a fundamental level and if you tackle aging at a fundamental level it might help us against diseases that are caused by aging. For example, if we understand what is it about aging that makes you more predisposed to Alzheimer's, that would be a big deal. If we could slow that down or prevent that, then we would be able to live without that fear of dementia. If we could improve our ability to tackle cancer, now cancer is tackled at many different levels, but one of the causes, one of the risk factors

Starting point is 00:43:34 for cancer is also aging. As we get older, we're more likely to get cancer. So I think there are lots of reasons why it's good to understand why we age. A lot of, it seems from talking to you, a lot of the talk about how we're going to increase longevity in people is the result of lifestyle and biology, diet, exercise, sleep. But my guess is that there's money in this and there's technology in this. So where is the money? Who's investing and how are they investing? I imagine it's tech people, right? A lot of it is funded by tech billionaires.

Starting point is 00:44:20 Most of them are middle-aged men and they're used to getting everything they want and the one thing they can't get is youth and there's a famous saying which is when they were young they wanted to be rich and now that they're rich they want to be young but of course they can't buy youth but what they can buy is research they can fund research in aging and so that's funding a lot of research and it's distorting the field the field has become full of hype every time you open up a newspaper or magazine or a blog you say you think of some you read about some advance and this could be the cause of aging, or that could cure aging. And I think understanding the fundamental biology of why we age

Starting point is 00:45:14 will not only allow us to live better and also approach life in a better way, but it'll also help us see beyond the hype. So next time we read about an article, we can connect it with the biology and we can ask, is this realistic? How long do I think this will take? And what are the actual prospects? So I think there are a lot of reasons to try to understand that. Besides, aging and death is something we've wondered about for centuries, for millions of years, probably.

Starting point is 00:45:51 And right now, we're in a position to understand some of the actual reasons why this happens. Why does it happen at this rate to us and a different rate to whales and to butterflies? I think all of those are interesting questions in their own right. And we as humans have been wondering about aging and death all of our existence. So now that biology has made advances and actually has some light to shed on these problems, I think it's an interesting thing. and actually has some light to shed on these problems, I think it's an interesting thing. Well, this is probably way outside the bounds of this conversation, but you know,

Starting point is 00:46:34 after we lick the whole longevity thing, then what about bringing people back? I think bringing somebody back who's already died is currently in the realm of science fiction. I know there are companies that freeze bodies, some of them even just freeze brains, but there's absolutely no evidence that any of those bodies or brains can be resuscitated, even in principle. Nobody has shown that even for a tiny, well, even for an animal like a mouse, they haven't been able to freeze a mouse and bring a mouse back. They have done it for very small animals like worms, tiny worms, and they do it for cells all the time. That's been used even in animal husbandry. But freezing even a small

Starting point is 00:47:32 animal has not yet been done. Well, this is something people talk about all the time about how they want to live a long time, but they don't want to live and not be healthy and be sick and be miserable. And this really elevates that conversation. I've been speaking with Nobel Prize winning molecular biologist Venki Ramakrishnan, and he is author of the book, Why We Die. There's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Venki. Thank you for coming on and explaining this.

Starting point is 00:48:03 Thank you for coming on and explaining this. Thank you. The next time you step outside today or tomorrow or whenever, take a moment and listen for the birds who are singing and chirping. There is scientific evidence that we can enhance our sense of well-being, clarity, and focus just by paying attention to those bird sounds. The speed and register of bird calls correlate to the frequency of our theta brainwaves, apparently. Those are our natural energizers.

Starting point is 00:48:43 Bird songs have also been found to make people feel less crowded in crowded situations and make unnatural sounds like traffic noise more tolerable, all from listening to the birds. And that is something you should know. If you've enjoyed this episode of Something You Should Know, I hope you will share it with someone else. They would appreciate it, I would appreciate it, and it would make you look like a hero. I'm Micah Ruthers.

Starting point is 00:49:05 Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Hey, hey, are you ready for some real talk and some fantastic laughs? Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? We're serving up four hilarious shows every week designed to entertain and engage and, you know, possibly enrage you. In Don't Blame Me, we dive deep into listeners' questions, offering advice that's funny, relatable, and real. Whether you're dealing with relationship drama or you just need a friend's perspective, we've got you.

Starting point is 00:49:34 Then switch gears with But Am I Wrong?, which is for listeners who didn't take our advice and want to know if they are the villains in the situation. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events and present situations that we might even be wrong in our lives. Spoiler alert, we are actually quite literally never wrong. But wait, there's more. Check out See You Next Tuesday, where we reveal the juicy results from our listener polls from But Am I Wrong? And don't miss Fisting Friday, where we catch up,

Starting point is 00:50:00 chat about pop culture, TV, and movies. It's the perfect way to kick off your weekend. So if you're looking for a podcast that feels like a chat with your besties, listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The

Starting point is 00:50:30 Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship, honesty, and positivity. Join me and an all-star cast of actors, including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others,

Starting point is 00:51:00 in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Something You Should Know - How to Improve Your Luck & A Much Better Way to Die

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