Today, Explained - Can we cheat death?

Episode Date: June 28, 2026

The trick to living a longer, happier life. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Jenny Lawton, fact-checked by Michelle Hirsch, engineered by Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Jonquilyn Hill. Iris Apfel celebrating her 100th birthday party in New York City. Photo by Patrick McMullan/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images for Central Park Tower. If you have a question, give us a call at 1-800-618-8545 or email [e-mail]. Listen to Explain It to Me ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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All vets are in network. Go to fetchpet.com slash save. Right now for your free quote. That's fetchpet.com slash save. Support for today, explain, comes from fetch. Fetch is pet insurance, if you hadn't figured it out. Do you have a pet? According to a study from a pet insurance company from a few years ago,

every six seconds a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill over $1,000, and it almost never comes at a convenience. time. So check out Fetch. You get paid up to 90% of vet bills. You can use Fetch for any vet in the U.S. and Canada. Every vet is in network. Go to fetchpet.com slash save right now for your free quote. That's fetchpet.com slash save. I don't see it being worse living to 100. That sounds way too long. Look forward to seeing a rose bloom to see this sunrise. You should always be in awe about everything.

But inevitably, if you outlive your family and your friends, then you're the last one there. My grandmother lived to be 97. She was active in church, had long friendships with her sorority sisters, and saw all six of her grandchildren go off to college. And by the time she passed, she'd done just about everything she wanted to do. With those jeans, I feel like I've got a good job. chance of living long too. But I'm also exercising, trying to eat right, resting, doing all the things to stack the deck in my favor. There's an entire movement of people who are working tix in their lives, and some of them are going to extremes. I'm John Flynn Hill, and this week

on Explain It to Me from Vox, The Quest to Live Forever, or at least to 150. Sarah Todd's a reporter for Statt News where she covers health. And recently, she went to the burning man of the longevity movement. This was called Vitalist Bay. It takes place in Berkeley, California. And this was just its second year of being in existence. It's an outgrowth of a movement of people who call themselves vitalists, and their focus is on beating death.

At Vitalist Bay, you'll experience the healthiest, most productive time of your life. It's a combination of people who are general longevity enthusiasts, as well as people who are investing in companies working on different drugs, researchers, you know, people from sort of all cross sections of the longevity world. Join us at Vitalist Bay and let's make aging history. You know, when I think of people who are trying to live forever, I think of a very certain type of bro billionaire. Who did you meet at this conference? What were the people like? Was it all billionaires? Interestingly, no, and this was something that took me by surprise.

You know, I had the same idea. We think of Brian Johnson, the rich guy who, you know, transfuses the blood of his first-born son. And I thought it would be pretty epic if my son, my father, and I completed the world's first multigenerational plasma exchange. Actually, I don't think he does that anymore, but he used to for longevity reasons. But the people at this conference, you know, I would certainly say they were people who are doing well for themselves. There were, you know, a fair amount of people who work in tech, that kind of thing. But they were not rich in the way that billionaires are rich.

And it was also a more diverse group than I had been expecting. There were a fair amount of women and people of color there. So that was really interesting to see. Are there particular reasons that, you know, that. these folks want to live longer? What's the motivating factor behind this? A lot of people were very outspoken about the idea that they're not afraid of death per se. They are more aware of death, I would say, than a lot of people in our average lives. But the people who I spoke with about this, a lot of them said what they really wanted out of longevity was to have enough time to do all the

things that they wanted to do in life. They're worried that the average lifespan isn't long enough. And they are also really concerned, not just about lifespan, but about health span, you know, the idea of being healthy well into your old age, into your 80s and 90s and beyond. A lot of folks had relatives with Alzheimer's or dementia. You know, what people want when it comes to the health of the mind and the brain, they want to remain themselves for as long as they can. There was one company that had a booth called neuro age. Their idea is that you can measure the biological age of your brain. And with that data, which they draw from a combination of MRI scans and blood tests, they say maybe we can help you figure out how to address certain things. The founder

I spoke with said that she had grown her hippocampus by 1.5% or something like that. This is, not clinically validated with lots and lots of human trials. This is a business, but it's certainly an area that a lot of companies are looking to get into. What were some of the more out there ideas you heard about? Okay, so there were some really interesting ones. One that I hadn't heard about before going is the concept of bodyoids. Hi, JQ, it's me, your bodyoid. So this is an idea.

There were two people from different startups that are working on this right now. of producing basically headless sacks of organs that you would then harvest in order to replace other failing organs. I don't have a brain, but if you need a heart, a liver, a kidney, maybe an eyeball, I got you. Oh, okay. Well, one that sounds creepy and upsetting. Also, it's giving, like, ship of Theseus. Like, at some point, this is no longer me if it's not my original, like, I don't know, everything. Totally. That's 100% a concern.

And, you know, I spoke with somebody, one of the other conference attendees, who said basically that he was like, if you're replacing these organs, even if it's not your brain itself, you know, what are you doing to your consciousness and to your personality? Is it still you? Come on. You're still you, Jake, you? Just a little pressure. And, you know, understandably, there's a lot of sort of, like, people who find the idea of doing this in humans to be quite creepy. Right now, the startups that are working on this are not focused on humans. They're looking at doing this. in animals like pigs and monkeys. And there are some interesting implications, not just for the longevity movement, but we do have a consistent problem with a lack of supply of organs for people who need a new kidney.

So that's one really interesting idea. And the idea of organ replacement overall is really popular. One person, one speaker there, outlined this idea of injecting bone marrow in your 40s, your kidney in your 50s, your heart in your 60s, and so on, and then potentially a whole body transplant by the time that you were 90,

so that you would be in a whole new body and be biologically 18 years old. That seems very wild and far off. Is there a timeline for this and some of the other technology they talked about? You know, I think that a lot of people predict like maybe 10 years, 20 years, but nobody really knows, right, when all this stuff is going to come together. I do think that there are a lot of products out right now, though, that are, you know, less wild and far out. There was a van there offering full body scans, for example. We did a mass blood test together. I wondered at the time that this was some sort of Guinness World Record for blood tests, because it was, you know, hundreds of people all sitting together doing it. So, yeah, there are definitely a lot of longevity products out there right now. Their scientific validity is another.

question, but they're certainly available for purchase. I think there's an irony here. You know, people have been wanting to live longer forever, but you cannot beat the inevitable. Death is the great equalizer. It comes for us all. Why are these folks so hopeful when, you know, this is the one fact of life. We all die. Yeah, it's a great question. I think, you know, one is that overall, the people who are drawn to the longevity movement tend to be very optimistic. So they're going to think on average that there's a better chance of beating death than I think the average person might consider. Then the other thing I think is a lot of faith in technology and scientific progress. Some people I spoke with said, yeah, it's true that, you know, for most of human history,

there hasn't been anything that we could do about it, despite lots of people who have tried, you know, since going back to the ancient Egyptians and Chinese emperors. But at the same time, they say now it's different. We've got AI. We've got the possibility of cryopreservation. We've got all of these different types of things that could potentially help people live longer. So I think that's the idea.

It's a lot of faith in technology and progress. Some of the ways we might live longer sound like they're right out of a sci-fi novel. Up next, what you can do for longevity right here, right now. Support for today, explain, comes from Fetch Pet Insurance. Here's what surprises a lot of pet owners. Something like every six seconds a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill over $1,000. And when I say hit, it sometimes feels like you're getting. hit because I can speak from personal experience that I've been hit with a vet bill over

$1,000. And I don't even have a pet. According to consumer advocate.org, Fetch is the most complete pet insurance for dogs and cats. You get paid back up to 90% of vet bills for accidents, illness, diagnostics, and more. All vets are in network so you can use Fetch for any vet in the U.S. or Canada. Get your free custom quote in about two minutes at fetchpet.com slash save. That's fetchpet. com slash save. Fetch love longer.

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automatic rate shopping, plus integrations with accounting and CRM software. the sooner you switch, the sooner you start saving time and money, get started with ShipStation Today and get 60 days free at Shipstation.com.com.com. Code today. Shipstation.com code today taxes and fees applied. I'm JQ. Back with Moore, explain it to me. Brian Walsh is an editorial director here at Vox. He's also an editor for our future perfect section, which basically looks at ways to make our world better. Recently, he went to the doctor's office for a routine checkup, and he left with something to write about. On top of, like, thankfully, like mostly just no bad news, which is the best you can kind of hope for, at this age, I asked my doctor about something new, which was the shingles vaccine. And I asked him about that, not because I'm even eligible for it, you're not eligible until you're 50, or even that I was necessarily worried about shingles at the moment, but because I've heard and looked at studies that indicate that it might have a pretty powerful protective effect. against neurodegenerative diseases like dementia and Alzheimer's. What does the shingles vaccine have to do with dementia?

That is an excellent question that scientists are still looking into. So basically this began with a study that happened in Wales a few years ago where there was basically an age cutoff among people who were eligible to get those vaccines. And what they found was that the vaccinated group was 20% less likely to develop dementia over like seven years following getting that vaccine. In people who have established dementia, it prevents progression or slows progression of the disease, which is truly a remarkable finding.

And then there have been other studies that have kind of replicated this finding. There was actually one that came out this month here in the U.S., and that found that there was a 24% lower risk of developing dementia in a study that was like 500,000 people, which is pretty impressive. Why that is is not, entirely clear, and it hasn't always been found. There have been other trials that sort of

didn't quite see this effect, but there's some thought that the virus itself might actually, when it gets reactivated, cause neuroinflammation that could be connected to dementia. It's also possible that simply the immune boosting effect of these vaccines may seem to sort of protect yourself against whatever it is that's connected with dementia. So it's almost like it has a side effect that would be really, really helpful because that's a big effect if that actually holds. So the Singles vaccine is a good example of a possible longevity hack. I'm curious in terms of things that are available right now to anyone. What's in your power rankings?

There's things everyone can do right now to really help themselves. I'd say just starting kind of like a countdown. Good afternoon. It's your drive time longevity tips from bububbub, Brian Walsh coming in at number four. Be social. As we get older, isolation does tend to set in. Like you actually see this in data. People like see fewer people.

They're less and less connected. And that really has a risk to your brain. People who are socially isolated, some studies have found they have something like a 32% higher risk of early death. You can actually see it sometimes in imaging studies. So whatever you can do to begin to work up, you know, more and more social connections or just maintain the ones you have. Because just like your body tends to break down as you get older, those social connections can too. not only will that ideally help protect your brain for the long term, but also, you know, it will make you happier.

It will make you feel more connected in the moment, too. And now number three. So eating, there's really a lot of evidence that the Mediterranean diet, which is basically, you know, a diet that uses olive oil rather than butter, a lot of vegetables, whole grains, fish as the protein, very little red meat. That's been found to really have an impact on reducing cancer, heart disease, even serious cognitive decline, that's probably a single diet that's most connected. Certainly, like, it's something I try to do.

Like, we, at my home, you know, we eat a lot of fish. And, like, reducing saturated fat, it doesn't mean, like, you can't eat these other things. Yeah, I was going to say, RFK told me that red meat and saturated fat are actually so cool right now. We're ending the war on saturated fats. It's funny because, like, saturated fat was, like, the devil in nutrition for a very long time. Like, I think we over corrected on that one. Like some saturated fat, some dairy is actually probably fine. But, you know, would I eat steak every day like apparently RFK does?

I would not. Number two. Get strong. What we're really learning is that when it comes to work that can be done on the body, to really ensure that you have a body that can last for the distance, strength training is really, really important. Basically, after your 20s, muscle mass just will continually fall. If you build it now, it's like banking more so you can lose that later, which unfortunately is inevitable.

But you can put it off as long as possible by building muscle, by building strength right now. And, you know, that brings me to something really important here, which is like when we talk about, you know, healthy longevity, it's not necessarily the final number that you hit. What people really want to maximize and really focus on is what we call health span, which is the number of years you have of healthy life. And that's where the good eating, the social connection, the strength training helps to maximize and make those years as long as possible. Because I think that's what you really want the end of the day. If you did not start lifting or like getting strong in your 20s, are you cooked? Like is it so over for you? Do you like, are you doing well?

No, it's never over. I mean, it's never, it's literally never too late. An hour of resistance work a week will get you most of the benefit you need. And you don't have to be crazy about it, but you do have to do it. Okay, what is your number one recommendation to fight father time? And number one? It is sleep. Ooh, that's the hardest one.

It weirdly is the hardest one. You think it would be the easiest one, right? Literally, all you do is lie down and close your eyes. But that really is the difference. And we really do know. Seven plus hours on a regular basis is tied to lower risk of heart disease, lower risk of diabetes, lower risk of cancer. It's probably like the most neuroprotective thing you can do for your brain

on a regular basis. And beyond that, what's really important is not just getting lots of sleep, but trying to get deep sleep specifically. Deep sleep seems to the one that really has the neuroprotective effect against dementia and things like that. I think at times I can be skeptical of longevity strategies. Like all of these things are part of a healthy lifestyle, yes. But it's really easy to fixate and to let it sort of become your whole life to the point that you're so busy working on living a longer life, living a healthier life, that you're not enjoying the things that make life worth living? How do you square that? How do you think about that? What I'm focusing on is like, I want to feel good now. I want to, you know, have the best life

I have now because that's the time I know I'll have. I mean, it's no guarantee to anyone in the future. You can, you know, you could be the most longevity-obsessed wellness influencer and, you know, a terrible thing can happen to you at 55. That's why you should. like what you're doing. And like with all these things, you know, whether it's the diet, whether it's the sleep, whether it's exercise, like find ways that you want to do them. Because if you feel like you're just forcing yourself to do it, you're not going to. No one has that willpower. Certainly doesn't have that willpower to like get a goal that won't pay off for, you know, 15, 20, 30 years. Let's say you lock in, do what you can and have the good

fortune of living into your 80s, 90s, maybe even 100. Then what? What actually makes life worth living. That's coming up. Support for today's explain comes from PolicyGenius. There are lots of ways you might be enjoying your summer, camping, barbecues, sun tanning, but those sunny moments occasionally get interrupted with reminders of your to-do list. Intrusive thoughts, like, I didn't take the trash out, or I still don't know where my birth certificate is, or I don't have life insurance. Well, I can't do your chores or find your documents, but I can point you toward policy genius. Policy Genius makes finding the best life insurance for your family a whole lot easier. It's an

insurance marketplace that allows you to compare quotes from some America's top insurers side by side for free. Their license team helps you get what you need fast so you can get on with your life. PolicyGenius can help you find the most affordable policy that meets your needs. With PolicyGenius, you can see if you can find 20-year life insurance policies starting at just $276 a year for $1 million in coverage. You can go to PolicyGenius.com to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you could save. That's PolicyGenius.com. Support for today, Explain comes from Chime. And if you're thinking about, you know, your doorbell, then you got another thing coming.

Because sometimes banking can feel like going through an obstacle course, constantly trying to avoid overdraft fees, minimum balance requirements and monthly charges. Chime wants to make things easier. Chime is changing the way people bank by offering rewarding fee-free banking. Banking built for you because why should you pay to get your own money? A question is old as time and Chime wants to answer it. chime isn't a traditional bank in that they won't charge you overdraft and monthly fees. And they even have thousands of fee-free ATMs for you used built for you. Not the 1%, the pesky 1% chime is not just smarter banking.

It is the most rewarding way to bank. You can head to chime.com slash explained. That is chime.com slash explained. It only takes a few minutes to sign up. Chime is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services for MyPay and Chime card provided by Chime's bank partners. Optional products and services may have fees or charges. Stateed annual percentage yield and cashback for Chime Prime only.

No minimum balance required. Checking account ranking based on a JD Power survey published October 20, 2025. For more information on APY rates, my pay, spot me, and travel perks. Go to chime.com slash disclosures. I'm JQ back with Explain It to Me. Roger Rosenblatt. I'm a writer, former professor of English and writing at Harvard and a few other places, Georgetown, Columbia, and Stony Brook.

So you recently published a book called More Rules for, aging. It's the sequel to a book you wrote 25 years ago called Rules for Aging. What do you know about aging now in your mid-80s that you didn't know when you initially wrote that first book? Well, the interesting thing is actually because I've done it. I've aged. When I wrote that book 25 years ago, it really wasn't for aging. It was sort of general, kind of funny, I guess, rules on how to get old, how to make it, in other words, how to achieve old age. Then once having achieved it, if you call that an achievement, I've been able to understand all the complexities that go with being old, and they are multiple.

How do you balance the things you love about aging with the things that you don't love about it? That is the essential question. The things I don't love about it is the frailty of the body. I used to play sports, I used to walk, I used to walk. to breathe. And all of the functions of the body that you take for granted as you get older start to fade and fade precipitously at age 80. I would love to know what you make of the longevity movement, this desire to live longer and longer and maybe not die at all. Well, there are a lot of people who are dead and don't know it. So they are walking contradictions of the rule. But the other

part of it is rather than wondering about how science will keep us living longer, it's the question of how to live. And that to me is a far more serious question, one that I was trying to toy with this morning thinking of another essay on the idea of peace and the achievement of peace in old age. And by peace, I do not mean the absence of strife or the absence of war. I mean an understanding of the comprehensible, complex, and changing a beautiful world around us. To achieve that kind of peace is something that only comes of old age because you've had a long enough time to see it all. I have a wonderful view of the East River, technically an estuary

from my apartment in New York City. The river goes on and on beyond certain islands and then disappears into eventually into the Atlantic. But what I can see from my river are boats and people and people walking and cars driving and ducks in a row and dogs being walked and birds in the air and trees that are blooming in different seasons. I can see it all from my, I'm lucky, I can see it all from my window. And what I am seeing is the very agated world that deserves appreciation and, and

and love, frankly. And so the piece that I'm talking about is really learning to love the world. You know, a lot of people want to live into their 80s, 90s, 100s, but they want to do that with the body of a 20-year-old. If science gets to that point, if that happens, do you think they'll lose something that people often gain as they age? Well, unless the 20-year-old is as stupid as the actual 20-year-old that you were, I wouldn't worry about it. It's the idea of how you're thinking about it. It'll be great. Sure, it would do anything, anything. I used to play basketball. Anything to be able to play basketball. I'd do anything to be able to lift a basketball now, but that is not to be. But I can see, you know, I can, I can see the world in a generous way. The way the world, I believe, has been given to us in a generous way. And that I only have achieved in the last few years.

If science got to that point, would you want to live to 150? Like, that's the number a lot of the folks in the long have any space mention. I wonder what do you think of that? If my marbles are in use for that time, and I don't bother anyone else, my wife, my children, my grandchildren with taking care of me, if that were the case, then I wouldn't mind living 150 years or any number of years. But if the mind were to go, that is, if the mind were to become less observant, I don't mean such a good mind. I mean, it is an observant mind. I've been blessed with that. If that were to go, then I would say, draw the curtain.

I want to play some tape for you. You're enjoying your later years, but that is not true for everyone. Miles, who's producing this show, his grandpa's 90. I am Jack Morrill. I'm a 90-year-old former academic, now living in a one-room assisted living room in Greencastle, India. And he's not moving around as much as he used to, but his mind is totally there. And he told Miles that this is sometimes made aging even harder.

I get ideas and there's no one to bounce them off of. I used to be able to watch ball games from beginning to end and I get bored more easily. My wife died on Easter Day 2024. So it's a lonely life. Do you have any advice for someone like Jack, you know, people who are your peers who We've outlived a lot of loved ones and are still struggling to find meaning in this particular season of life. It is truly a problem.

And if you have outlived all your loved ones and have no one, it's not so much to bounce ideas off, it usually have friends. I have a gang of guys who will outlive me because each one is about 10 years younger. And we call the Meatheads. And we have been friends for 50 years, started out just going. to see bad movies together, and then we meet once a month and just kid around. That is a valuable thing. Actually, I fortified myself by building a whole coterie of friends who will grow with me, providing that we all do. I'm in my mid-30s. I don't consider myself quite in mid-life yet.

I'm giving myself a little bit more. You are a kid. Actually, you're a kid, and you are, mid-30s is nothing. I would say you start to understand the definitions of middle age when you hit your late 40s. What advice do you have for me? What's a better way to approach my own aging? How do I embrace this so that I can sort of have that sense of peace now and into hopefully my 80s? Well, one way, certainly when under waste your time talking to people like me. But the second, But one way I seriously mean, I realize how repetitive I sound, is that be aware of how much you appreciate the world around you. For my writing students, when they would say they were stuck and they had a blank spot and they couldn't think of a subject to write about. I would say, go for a walk, take out a kayak, go for a bike ride, do something.

It will come to you. It will come to you. And I say the same to you. The world will come to you. I don't know how this happens. I think I know why it happens. It happens because whatever design there is to the world, part of it is that it makes creatures who are appreciative

or ought to be appreciative of the world itself. And so if we can see the world as something so various, so new, so continuously, insistently new. Then old age is a happy stage of life. And that's our show. We want your help with an upcoming episode. We're talking about our relationship with the sun.

Tanning is back, big time. But we want your stories of your worst sunburn. The day that makes you peel just thinking about it. Give us a call at 1-800-6-18-45, or send an email to AskVox at Vox.com. Becoming a Vox member will not make you look like you just got back from vacation, but it will let you listen to this and other Vox podcasts ad-free. Head to Vox.com slash members to learn more.

This episode was produced by Miles Bryan. It was edited by Jenny Lawton, fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch, engineered by Patrick Boyd. Our executive producer is Miranda Kennedy, and I'm your host, John Glenn Hill. Thank you so much for listening. Bye. Hey, y'all. It's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair.

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