The Current - This 101-year-old superager’s secret to living well

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

Scientists with the SuperAging Research Initiative are studying a group of superagers — people 80 and up who have the memory of people half their age — to understand what helps them stay sharp. We speak with Morry Kernerman, a lifelong violinist who’s 101 years old, and still hiking, travelling and teaching music, and with Angela Roberts at Western University in London, Ont., who’s leading the study in Canada, about how biology and lifestyle contribute to aging well.

The Alto High Speed Rail Project is on track. Expected travel time from Toronto to Montreal, three hours. Next stop, public consultations in your community. Make your voice heard. Visit altotrain.ca for more information. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Somebody I would like you to meet. His name is Maury Kernerman.

He is a violinist in Toronto and a centenarian. It's been an interesting life. Maybe that's what's kept it going. I've been fascinated all the way through. There have been times when it was almost overwhelmingly difficult. The wonderful thing about it, I guess now in my so-called old age, and I don't feel, I don't think of it as old age, but I'm able to do something that I never did before.

I mean, I basically didn't have a childhood. I was a kind of child product. and the responsibility of practicing. And, you know, I had to constantly, I felt, prove myself. I guess things have come full circle because I feel now I've reached the kind of childhood or a more childlike childhood that I was able to feel as a child.

Because now, I mean, I can really enjoy the world as it is. and there's so many wonderful things going on, in spite of all the dreadful things that are happening. Morrie Kernerman turns 101 years old today. Happy birthday, sir. He is what scientists call a superager, not just because he's lived long, but also because he's living well.

I guess I'm sort of getting used to passing that centennial point in my life. In a way, it's bewildering, because people look upon it as though I've achieved something. I've accomplished something. But, of course, I haven't, not at all. Someone up there has been generous to me, I guess, as well. I'm lucky my father lived to be almost 102.

I guess genetically that has impacted mine, and I feel grateful for that. I do exercise, and I try to do it daily. When I get up, I try even in bed to do things. I do get on the bike now every day, the exercise bike. That absolutely does make a difference. There's no question of it. I hadn't been doing much exercise in my earlier days.

I have to admit, and I had back problems. But in later years, I started to take it very seriously. And I can't say that I really enjoy the exercise. I enjoy afterwards. I feel proud of myself sometimes that I've done this so many push-ups or so many planks or something like that. I do squats every day. I can do a great many. A wonderful exercise is getting up for the chair, but very, very slowly, so that you control every movement as you get up from that chair. That kind of thing has helped me immensely. It hasn't stopped me from aging, and I know that I'm, at the moment, I'm more than a year older than I was a year ago. But it's sort of a rearguard action, which is having some effect. So I have to exercise.

Another thing, besides exercises, I refuse to give in to things that make it easier. Some months ago, when I was about to open the door of a building, a big door I was approaching, I put my hand out. I was touching the handle to pull it toward me. And suddenly, some young guy pulled up in front of me, pressed a button, and it opened, magically. It opened. And I, of course, I thanked him for doing that. We both walked in. And I turned to him and I said, young man, let me just tell you for a moment, you're very young and I am very old. Now, why am I able to get around trying to open the store and everything like that? Why am I able to do that now? Because I didn't press that button. And even now, I'd never press those buttons. That's the thing to keep doing it. Don't press the button.

Don't hold onto the wall when you're putting on your shoes or your pants or something or whatever it is. If you can manage. If you can't, well, you can't. But very often these things are not absolutely necessary. Yes, they're difficult. But they're the things that keep us going. If we give in all the time, it's over. It's remarkable.

In addition to not giving up on physical activity, Mori keeps his mind active as well, especially through music. I listen to a great deal of music. It's inevitable that you do memorize things as you listen. But, you know, I get to hear a lot of things, even works that I myself have played. I listen to a recording of it. And, oh, there's a passage, a difficult one.

then I put it on at half speed or three quarters of speed, and I listen to it a few times that way. And it's a great way of learning. It does tax your mind. I also try to keep my mind going by things I read, and now I'm doing it with difficulty because my eyesight is less than perfect for reading. It's all right for driving the car. I'm doing very well. I'm in my by distance vision. is excellent, but for reading now it's becoming problematic. I'm just about to start using audiobooks. I think there would be a good opportunity to keep my mind active. Also, I've tried to study a few things. I belong to the Arts and Letters Club, and sometimes we do a lot of things which can be challenging. Not long ago, I finished waiting for Godo. It was one thing. We studied

Hamlet and I go to the art gallery a great deal. There's so many things like that happening. To the best of my ability, I try to embrace them, usually with great enthusiasm too. I think that life is fascinating for any of us. Just so full of possibilities. What is it that happens that turns it off sometimes? I mean, there's such an abundance of choices, of things.

We don't have to be something to enjoy. get enjoyment from it. And if people around us can give us that, we should grab it. We're so afraid of doing the wrong thing, of making a mistake, of failing, of being humiliated, I don't know. We're so afraid of all that. And what happens is that we don't go that way or this way, we stand still. And that is terrible. That's such a pity.

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With a variety of voyages and sailing dates to choose from, now is the time to explore Europe's waterways. Learn more at viking.com. It's something we could all learn from no matter our age. Mori is part of a North American study that is investigating a remarkable cohort of older people, unlocking the secrets to a long and fulfilling life. Angela Roberts leads Canada's superaging research initiative.

She is at Western University in London, Ontario. Angela, good morning. Good morning, Matt. He's remarkable. He is. And I think, as I say, good morning to you and I was listening in the background to that interview. I think I am so moved and excited that you and your listeners get to meet a superager. You know, Mori is remarkable, but he's like many of the folks we have the gift of spending time with in this study.

What makes him a superager? How do you define what that is? Yeah, the super aging research initiative, and I must say there are other studies around the world interested in exceptional cognition as we get older. Our particular definition that we apply in this study is based on age and memory performance. So to be a superager, you have to be at least 80. Mori meets that criteria. And then you have to perform on a memory test, usually involving learning a new set of words, at least as good. is people in their 50s and 60s.

So what we're really measuring and understanding are people who are beating that curve of what we expect to be age-related decline in thinking skills and memory as we get older. Can you talk a bit more about that and why memory in particular is a key factor in figuring out who is and who is not a super-ager? And that's a really good question. So, you know, in addition to their memory being exceptional for age, they have to be at least age, perform like other 80-year-olds, at least like other 80-year-olds and other cognitive domain. So memory here actually is a little bit special. When we think about conditions like

dementia, for example, changes in memory or declines in memory are often one of the first things that we see. And as we get older, we can have some natural changes in our ability to remember, for example, new information or to hold new information in memory. And we kind of see this age-related change around 80 and certainly if someone has dementia, we see that earlier. And it's often because the type of memory we measure is linked to a part of the brain called the hippocampal structure, so one on either side of the brain. We see those shrink back and we see many dementia diseases or pathologies affect that region of the brain. So by using memory, we're not only thinking about, you know, folks that are beating that age trajectory, but also understanding, perhaps,

how these individuals are not developing the same diseases or are resilient to the same diseases that cause dementia. How are you monitoring people like Mori, people in this study? Yes, they're incredibly generous with their time, I will say that. So even at this age, people like Mori come in. We do a baseline testing that sometimes takes us a couple of sessions to get everything done. We look at cognition and we take images of their brain. we do some physical testing. We take blood work so that we can look at genetics and other blood-based factors.

Then we have them come back in every two years. And so they are with us until the point in time that they die. So once we have a superager in our fold, they're with us for the long haul. The other piece that is unique to the Canadian innovation part of this study and something that I think is quite remarkable is we actually monitor our people are doing at home. So we send them home with wearable devices. We look at their daily activities over a couple of weeks, 24 hours a day, which is an interesting part of the study. There are a couple of things he said that, and you mentioned activity. One is exercise. I mean, he seems to be doing more than the guidelines

would suggest. What would that do in terms of fighting off perhaps some of the signs of aging that that others might be facing. I mean, I think Mori said it best, right? Exercise is really important. And we certainly see that as a factor in our super agers. So remember, I said, you know, we actually follow what they're doing at home. And this is the first study to do that. And one of our observations, and I think it's one of the surprises in this study,

is that our 80-year-olds, whether super-agers or age-typical cognition folks, which is our control group, they're all doing. around 25 to 30 minutes of exercise a day. And that is the Canadian guidelines and probably more than some of us are getting. But our super-agers get about 30% more daily exercise in terms of not just movement, but the type of movement that gets your heart rate moving, what we think about is moderate to vigorous physical activity. They're getting about 30% more of that than our control group on a daily basis.

And that's important. Exercise not only helps to give us a strong heart to a strong brain, but we have more and more data from research telling us that exercise can slow the progression of dementia, the onset of dementia. What about the exercise of his mind? He talked about, you know, he played violin as a career, but music is still a huge part of his life. What does that do?

Yes, you know, I think cognitive stimulation, in Moore's case, that's music. And we're starting as a Canadian group, in large part because people like Maury and others, tell us music is important. We're starting to try to understand that. But keeping the mind active, continuing passions in life, as well as taking on new task and new learning and new activities, it really is a common trait across all of our superagers and is something that is quite remarkable. They are not stopping for life, right? They are continuing to push those boundaries, and it's a pretty common finding. His mindset is fascinating. As he said, life is fascinating, but also he has this approach of, he understands he's getting older, but he thinks differently about what that means.

Oh, isn't it a fascinating insight, right? And I often say, our 80-year-old super-ageers say, I'm not remarkable. Go look at so-and-so, he's 90. Our 90-year-old super-ager say, I'm not remarkable. Go look at Mori, he's 101. And you even hear it in Mori saying, I'm not sure how remarkable I am. You know, our super-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-tall-a-tall-a-tall-a-tall-a-tall-a-old, this is just what it means to get older in Canada today, and we should be embracing it. So just finally, before I let you go, what can we learn from this research, from listening to someone like Mori about aging and how we can age better?

That's what we all want, but what could we take from that? Yeah, I, you know, one of the things I often say is longevity may not be our greatest achievement, but aging well might be. And I think for our super agers, you know, one of the things we know this is not a party trick. They're not just good at memorizing things. We see changes in their brain structure that relates to that preserved cognition. So we know this is actually a biological phenomenon. I think what we can learn about them and from them and with them is that no matter what you've done in your life, right there, and you heard Mory say that I wasn't always an avid exerciser, but I started.

We have super-aiders who are track athletes today who didn't start that until they were in their 70s. Embracing life, being fascinated by existence, seeing the wonder in the world, being willing to take on new things, living with resilience and zest, and continuing to try those good habits of, you know, persistent exercise, regular exercise, good sleep habits. engaging activities like music are all really important for how we go into this aging trajectory, not with a mindset of decline, but with the hope and the promise of aging well. As I say, that's a lesson that I think all of us could learn and take from, no matter what our age. Angela, thank you very much. This research is really, really interesting, and more. He's just a fascinating subject.

Thank you. He is. Thank you for your time this morning. It was great to connect. Angela Roberts leads Canada's super aging research initiative. She is a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Data Analytics and Digital Health in Cognitive Aging and Dementia at Western University in London, Ontario. You've been listening to the current podcast.

My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca slash podcasts.