The World as You’ll Know It: The Future Of Aging
Human beings are living longer than ever. Thanks to advances like vaccines, antibiotics, pasteurized milk and clean water, we’ve added more than 30 years to the average lifespan over the last 120 years. That’s more than was added in the previous 10,000 years combined. More recently, enormous progress has been made in our treatment of deadly conditions like heart disease and cancer, with mortality rates for each dropping by double digits. Now science is tackling a new challenge: Can we cure aging itself? In pursuit of this holy grail, longevity research has gone from a sleepy backwater to a multi billion dollar field, populated — yes — by plenty of hucksters, but also by Nobel laureates. The goal is to find out what causes us to age and what we can do to slow it down, or maybe even reverse it altogether. Could tweaking the right molecule buy us 20 more years, or are we maxed out? Can older brains be re-wired to function like younger brains? Do any so-called biohacks actually work? These are some of the questions we are tackling in this season of The World as You’ll Know It: The Future of Aging. With leading scientists in the fields of biology, neuroscience and medicine, we’ll look at the cutting-edge of aging research and what living longer could mean for all of us.
Latest episodes
4 snips
Oct 8, 2020 • 33min
02: The Future of Work
Steven Greenhouse, the author of "Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor," speaks to David Autor, the Ford Professor of Economics at MIT, about how Covid is likely to change the workforce by accelerating automation and reducing the number of low-wage jobs. STEVEN GREENHOUSE was a reporter for The New York Times for over thirty years, covering labor and the workplace for many of them. He is the author of two books: Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor and The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker.DAVID AUTOR is the Ford Professor of Economics at MIT and co-chair of its Work of the Future task force.A transcript of this episode is available at Aventine.org To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oct 1, 2020 • 34min
01: The Future of Climate Change
David Wallace-Wells, the author of "The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming" speaks to Christiana Figueres, the former Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, about the catastrophic difference between the earth's temperature rising by 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius by 2100.DAVID WALLACE-WELLS is the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, a best-selling book based on a story he wrote in 2017, which was the most widely read in the history of New York Magazine. He writes about climate and other issues for New York.CHRISTIANA FIGUERES is the former Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and played a vital role in the negotiations that led to the landmark Paris Agreement of 2015. She is also the co-author of The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis and the co-host of the Outrage + Optimism podcast.A transcript of this episode is available at Aventine.org To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Sep 16, 2020 • 2min
Introducing: The World As You'll Know It
Welcome to The World as You'll Know It, a new podcast that pairs established journalists with experts to discuss the ways in which Covid-19 will shape the course of the future. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
