Radiolab - The Secret to a Long Life

Producer Sindhu Gnanasambandan wants to know how she can live the longest feeling life possible. The answer leads her on a journey to make one week feel like two. And the journey leads her to a whole new answer.Special thanks to Jo Eidman, Nathan Peereboom, Kristin Lin, Stacey Reimann, Ash Sanders… and an extra special thanks to Jae Minard for editorial supportEPISODE CREDITSReported by - Sindhu GnanasambandanProduced by - Sindhu GnanasambandanOriginal music and sound design contributed by - Jeremy Bloomwith mixing help from - Arianne WackFact-checking by - Emily Kriegerand Edited by - Pat Walters Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected]. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Duration: 35m
Broadcast on: 06 Oct 2023
Audio Format: other

Producer Sindhu Gnanasambandan wants to know how she can live the longest feeling life possible. The answer leads her on a journey to make one week feel like two. And the journey leads her to a whole new answer.Special thanks to Jo Eidman, Nathan Peereboom, Kristin Lin, Stacey Reimann, Ash Sanders… and an extra special thanks to Jae Minard for editorial supportEPISODE CREDITSReported by - Sindhu GnanasambandanProduced by - Sindhu GnanasambandanOriginal music and sound design contributed by - Jeremy Bloomwith mixing help from - Arianne WackFact-checking by - Emily Kriegerand Edited by - Pat Walters

Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

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RIDILEB is supported by AT&T. We all love to connect via video calls or texts. Right now, at AT&T, you can get the new iPhone 18 Pro for $0 with iPhone trade-in. Any condition. It has the ultimate pro camera system and big leap in battery life, so you can turn this deal into a long-lasting connection. Learn how you can trade in your iPhone for the new iPhone 18 Pro requires trade-in of iPhone 14 or higher, excluding iPhone 16E, an eligible plan. Terms and restrictions apply, subject to change, visit an AT&T store for details. This is RadioLab, I'm Lulu Miller. I'm Latif Nasir, and we're going to start this one right here, and we'll grab it. With our producer, Cindy Niana Sombondan. I had to take the tape off from, well, who, a few weeks ago, brought me into the studio to show me a very large poster. Life calendar and lots of red Xs. Yeah, so this is a poster that I keep across from my bed. It's basically this giant grid of boxes. There's 52 going across, 90 going down, and every Sunday I use this red marker to cross off a box. So, 52 weeks for a year, so each box is a week? Exactly. And, like, in theory, you'll maybe make it to 90 years. Exactly. If I live to be 90 years old, every single box will be checked off. I'm triggered. I am. I am. Why on earth? Yeah. Well, I got this poster six years ago when I was living in this Zen Buddhist commune, and part of the practice there was to really confront our own mortality, and this poster was a way for me to do that. But as I've been doing this for years now, just checking off a box week after week after week, I'm starting to notice something, which is that these weeks are going faster and faster. And I know people say this happens, that time moves more quickly as we get older, but I'm really feeling it happening, you know, like, I'm about to turn 30, and I feel like I'm going to wake up tomorrow, 80 years old, staring death right in the face. That's interesting, because I think you're right that, like, a lot of us do get the bleary sense of, like, "Whoa, whoa, that year just went by, but for you having those regular check-in points must make you notice it in a slightly more granular way." Yeah. And it's made me, like, desperately want to know, "Is there something I can do to slow this down?" To slow time? Yeah. Like, "Is there a way for me to make my life, like, this one single life I have? Yeah. Is there a way for me to make it feel longer?" Could you send me a link to where you want to find this poster or where you want? So I actually called up a couple of time perception researchers, Mark Whitman.

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