How to Improve Your Luck & A Much Better Way to Die

This episode discusses practical strategies to increase one's luck and explores innovations in the science of aging that could extend human life.

1. Recognizing the impact of randomness and chance can help individuals seize opportunities to create good luck.
2. Persistence in efforts, regardless of the field, can increase one's chances of success.
3. Lifestyle choices such as exercise, moderate eating, and sufficient sleep are crucial for longevity.
4. Scientific advancements are promising in extending healthy human life, though true immortality remains a complex challenge.
5. Practical engagement in various activities increases the likelihood of experiencing fortunate events.

1: Understanding Luck

Explores how acknowledging the role of randomness can enhance one's approach to opportunities and challenges. Key discussions include insights from Mark Robert Rank, who emphasizes the importance of being open to and prepared for chance events. Mark Robert Rank: "Luck favors the prepared mind."

2: Strategies for a Longer Life

Details scientific efforts to understand and combat aging, with Venki Ramakrishnan highlighting how lifestyle and genetic research contribute to extending healthy life spans. Venki Ramakrishnan: "Understanding the biology of aging could fundamentally change our approach to diseases and longevity."

3: Practical Advice on Luck

Offers actionable strategies for increasing one's exposure to beneficial random events, such as being active in various endeavors to improve odds of success. Mike Carruthers: "Get out there, meet people, be in situations where luck can find you."

1. Engage actively in various communities to increase the probability of fortunate encounters.
2. Maintain a lifestyle that includes regular exercise, balanced diet, and adequate sleep to enhance longevity.
3. Embrace and prepare for randomness in daily life to better capitalize on unexpected opportunities.
4. Persist in your efforts across multiple avenues to increase success rates.
5. Educate yourself on the latest scientific research in aging to apply beneficial practices in personal health management.

Just how much pesticides residue is on the produce you buy? Should you be concerned? Should you buy organic? Consumer Reports recently did an investigation into pesticides on fruits and vegetables and I begin this episode with some of the surprising results. https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-contaminants/produce-without-pesticides-a5260230325/

Luck is just around the corner. It may be good luck or it may be bad luck but chance and luck have a huge impact on how things turn out for you. When you understand how luck and chance work in your life, you can do things to improve your good luck and minimize the bad. Joining me to explain how all this works is Mark Robert Rank, a professor 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 (https://amzn.to/3W1mDb4).

Every living thing will die one day. What’s interesting is that some living things - for instance a butterfly - may live only a few days before it dies while a tortoise or whale might live hundreds of years. Why do something age quickly and others slowly. Can we somehow slow down human aging so we live longer than we do now? A lot is going on to understand the aging process and slow it down according to my guest Venki Ramakrishnan. He is a Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist and author of the book Why We Die (https://amzn.to/49KII0z) Listen as he offers some fascinating insight into how aging works and we can slow down the inevitable.

You’ve probably heard the advice to, “Stop and smell the roses.” While that’s certainly a good idea, you may also want to stop and listen to the birds sing and chirp. Listen and I will explain how bird songs are good for your soul. https://www.treehugger.com/why-do-birds-sing-5179422

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Mark Robert Rank, Venki Ramakrishnan

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Books

"The Random Factor" by Mark Robert Rank, "Why We Die" by Venki Ramakrishnan

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Mark Robert Rank, Venki Ramakrishnan

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Mike Carruthers
Hey, here's something you should know. Some experts estimate that up to 77% of the population has some level of speaking anxiety. I actually thought it was higher than that. Strong communication is a critical skill for success, which is why I'd like to recommend a podcast I know you're going to love called Think Fast Talk smart. Produced by the folks at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Think Fast Talk Smart is the number one career podcast in over 95 countries.

And here's why. Each week, Stanford lecturer Matt Abrahams, who, by the way, has been on this podcast a couple of times, Matt sits down with experts to discuss the best tips to help you improve all kinds of skills from making small talk. That leaves a big impression, keeping your nerves in check while speaking in front of crowds. I mean, there's a reason this show has over 42 million downloads and counting. Youll hear from people like neuroscientist Andrew Huberman on how to manage speaking anxiety, speech writer and bestselling author Daniel pink on how to take risks in your communication, and psychologist Kelly McGonagall on how to harness that nervous energy to fuel powerful presentations.

All that and so much more is available on think fast talk smart. So what are you waiting for? Listen every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube, and you can tell them, I sent you 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. 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.

Venki Ramakrishnan
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. If you employ people, you know that finding the right person to fill a job opening can be daunting. And you know, most people I know who run a business don't really have a proven system to do this. It can be real hit or miss.

Mike Carruthers
Which is why if you're hiring, you need indeed, 93% of employers agree that indeed delivers the highest quality matches compared to other job sites, according to a recent indeed survey. Indeed is. It's a whole hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors, according to indeed data, and a matching engine that helps you find quality candidates and find them fast. So what I love about indeed is when you use it, you get this feeling of confidence that, yeah, this is the way to find the right people. You're not winging it or just sorting through resumes hoping to find someone.

And indeed's matching engine is constantly learning from you. So the more you use indeed, the better it gets. There's so many reasons to use indeed, and there are so many reasons not to do this on your own. And listeners of this show will get a dollar 75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@indeed.com. Something just go to indeed.com, something right now that helps to support our show by saying, you heard about indeed on this podcast, indeed.com something terms and conditions apply.

Need to hire you need indeed 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. 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 theres really nothing to worry about. Still, a lot of people buy organic because they dont want pesticides on their food.

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 theres 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 US for over ten years. 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 eleven 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, 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, 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, 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 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 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. 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.

Mark Robert Rank
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, 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? 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 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 a 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, and what had happened to them. But one of the things I didn't anticipate was over and over, people would say things like, 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. 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, but a lot of times underplayed and underappreciated. And yet, I bet anybody who would just stop and think about it and think about the random events in their life, the people that came into their lives or the place they were at or something happened, has had a 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, 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 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. You know, and as a social sociologists, 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 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.

Mike Carruthers
They happen. When they happen, then 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.

Mark Robert Rank
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. 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.

Mike Carruthers
So understanding that these chance events, these chance meetings, these lucky things that can happen really on a daily basis, what do we do with this? How do we maximize this if there is a way so we have more luck? Well, one way to think about this is, okay, as we live our lives, and this gets to some of the work that I've done in the past 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?

Mark Robert Rank
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, you can get sick. A pandemic can happen. 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. 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. 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.

Mike Carruthers
You don't know what it is, but something's going to go wrong. Exactly. Exactly. So I think that that's one among many lessons that we can learn from this, you know, sort of greater appreciation in terms of how random 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?

Mark Robert Rank
So a lot of times people will say to me, they'll say, it's interesting you're doing a book on luck and chance, but 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.

Pasteur had the saying, luck favors the prepared mind. So that's something that definitely people can think about. 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.

Mike Carruthers
If it's a system, if it's a managed outcome, then it's not luck. That's 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 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, and our listeners here are probably, too, which is called the gambler's fallacy.

Mark Robert Rank
What that is, it's applying probability. 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 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. Overall odds, if you do it 1000 times, will be 50 50.

But if you only spin the wheel ten 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 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. 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.

Mike Carruthers
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.

Mark Robert Rank
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 bad things to happen to you. So that's kind of the other side of the coin here. But absolutely.

Another sort of example I give, 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, like, for example, when I send out things, 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 ten 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 your odds by having more irons in the fire. And that's, I think, a really valuable lesson for people to take away with.

Mike Carruthers
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. But a really good example of the importance of having irons in the fire is if you look at well known authors like Hemingway or JK Rowling, they had their first manuscripts rejected like 10, 15, 20 times before it was finally accepted.

Mark Robert Rank
Harry Potter was rejected by eleven or twelve 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, 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, because it probably will be the case that it at some point will be a positive outcome.

Mike Carruthers
But there's a difference between persistence and luck. Yes, but 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, and using it to your advantage. But it's interesting. When you're playing roulette, it truly is luck.

When you're trying to get published, it may be lucky, but it also, 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.

Mark Robert Rank
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 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 look at their life and say, God, you've had a, just a slew of bad luck, and you wonder, well, why is that? Why isn't it more spaced out? Why doesn't everybody get a little bit of everything?

Mike Carruthers
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.

Mark Robert Rank
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, 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, that we'll talk about randomness. The fact that you and I are born are, the odds of it are 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 poor. And in terms of good breaks and bad breaks, you often will see that play out in this way.

Mike Carruthers
Well, I just think it's fun to think about all the luck in your life. I mean, 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.

Mark Robert Rank
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 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 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, be in situations. But people don't often think of that as luck. They think of that as well.

Mike Carruthers
See, I'm out there. I'm doing things. It's me. I'm in charge of my life. But 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.

Mark Robert Rank
That's exactly right. And, you know, you 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, 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, come, come through in your favor. You know, it's interesting.

Mike Carruthers
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. The worry of what other people will think, I think, stops people from trying to be lucky. I think you're exactly right. Somebody once said to be an actor, you have to have the height of a rhinoceros.

Mark Robert Rank
You have to be able to take rejection. And that's true in life in general. Look, you and I, we do different things. I'm sure both of us face rejections all the time, but we also have things that are positive that come out of that. And so you got to 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 I'm going to be out there.

I'm going to do my best. 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 maneuver your own luck to some degree. And it's just interesting to understand how it works.

Mike Carruthers
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 the, and there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes.

Thank you, Mark. Appreciate you coming on 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? 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 Venki Ramakrishnan is here to discuss. Venki is author of a book called why we die. Welcome. Welcome to something you should know. Hello.

Venki Ramakrishnan
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 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.

Mike Carruthers
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.

Venki Ramakrishnan
I'll give you two. I'll say two things about that. One is, although all living things are made of the same material, they're all made of DNA and proteins and cell membranes and things like that, 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. 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. Death is 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 property of complex systems. And do you see? Do you believe, do you hope that one day we will be immortal?

Mike Carruthers
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.

Venki Ramakrishnan
There's no physical law that says we can't colonize Mars or we can't travel to a different galaxy. 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, I think it's safe to say we have slowed it down.

Mike Carruthers
I mean, people seem to be healthier longer than they used to be. We've slowed down the aging process. But eventually time takes a toll. Things wear out. Things die, houses die, cars die, blenders die, and people die.

Venki Ramakrishnan
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, 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 it's 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 ourselves? At the moment, we're nowhere near it. Is anyone even trying?

Mike Carruthers
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.

Venki Ramakrishnan
But no one knows how long this is going to last. No one knows about the long term safety. One of the things about us is the brain. No one has shown that we can regenerate tissues in the brain because the brain doesn't regenerate very, 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. If we could? Why is this important?

Mike Carruthers
Because it seems, as you just said, we're all 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 talking about this? Great question.

Venki Ramakrishnan
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. 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, 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 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 that a healthy lifestyle, 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.

Mike Carruthers
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. Seems like it's being done already. The one thing that suggests that there's something there is the study of centenarians.

Venki Ramakrishnan
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 supercentenarians, these are people who live to be over 110 or semi supercentenarians who live to be 105. These people spend a very short time in poor health, so they're healthy and independent for 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 if you extend somebody's life, but you're just extending the misery at the end, what's the point? As opposed to, 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 these diseases of aging, for 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, you know, 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.

Mike Carruthers
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 suddenly get cancer and nobody knows why, and it kills you or whatever, but when you take that out, when you take that out of the conversation, because you have no control over that, there are some things, it seems, that people can do now that we know really helps longevity. In fact, people who study the biology of 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.

Venki Ramakrishnan
Of course, added onto 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?

Mike Carruthers
What is the message? What is it you want people to take away from this? 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 122.

Venki Ramakrishnan
Nobody else that we know of has even exceeded 120. 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. 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 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.

Mike Carruthers
But my guess is that there's money in this, that, 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.

Venki Ramakrishnan
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 and 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 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. 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. Well, this is probably way outside the bounds of this conversation, but 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. We freeze cells all the time that's been used, even in animal husbandry, but freezing, even a small animal, has not yet been done.

Mike Carruthers
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, you know? 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. 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 brain waves. Apparently, those are our natural energizers. Birdsongs 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 Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know.