Big Think

• Freezing time in your best years, not your end years | Dr. Morgan Levine

  Age expert Dr. Morgan Levine explains why living to 100 is the wrong goal. Dr. Morgan Levine suggests that we should aim for living better, not just longer. In her book, “True Age,” Levine introduces the idea of healthspan, which is about staying healthy and enjoying life, rather than merely adding years to it. She explores the concept of “compression of morbidity,” a goal to squeeze most of our inevitable ailments into a short period before we die, mirroring the patterns seen in people who live to 100 or more. Levine also highlights a paradox: Women generally outlive men, but they also endure more age-related illnesses. Ultimately, she argues that the benefits of longevity science should be accessible to everyone, with the goal of health disparities rather than increasing them. 0:00 The immortality obsession 0:30 The male-female survival paradox 1:34 Prolonging healthy life 2:07 Squeezing morbidity into fewer years 3:05 LIfe extension for all ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About Morgan Levine: Morgan Levine was previously a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the department of Pathology at Yale University where she ran the Laboratory for Aging in Living Systems. In 2022, she was recruited to join Altos Labs as a Founding Principal Investigator at the San Diego Institute of Science. She currently leads a research group at Altos Labs working at the intersection of bioinformatics, cellular biology, complex systems, and biostatistics with the overall goal of understanding the molecular trajectories aging cells, tissues, and organisms take through time. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------- Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• We can cure almost all human diseases. Here’s how. | Albert-László Barabási

  The Human Genome Project was a major breakthrough in medicine, but according to network scientist Albert-László Barabási, simply having a list of genes is not enough to fully understand how they interact, and crucially, how our bodies work. Barabási believes network science — which studies complex patterns and interactions between our cells — can fill in this gap by creating a biological map from which we could develop new cures, and even predict diseases. He explains that disease genes often have mutations that result in a missing interaction within the sub-cellular network, which then causes problems in the functioning of a cell. Traditional medicinal interventions can lead to unwanted side effects, as they also affect other cellular processes in the network; network medicine has revealed that these complex systems, though robust, are also fragile to attacks, and removing a few major hubs can break the network into tiny pieces. Understanding the structure of the network within our cells can allow for precise interventions that cure the problem without causing other issues. For Barabási, the ideal future of medicine would involve individualized network diagrams being adopted as a standard tool for doctors to show patients where mutations are, how they impact the rest of the cell, and how interventions can stop their effects. 0:00 The map of life: Human Genome Project 1:01 What is network medicine? 2:09 The Achilles’ heel 4:20 A new kind of doctor will emerge ------- Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• The “afterlife” according to Einstein’s special relativity | Sabine Hossenfelder

  Sabine Hossenfelder investigates life's big questions through the lens of physics, particularly Einstein's theory of special relativity. She highlights the relativity of simultaneity, which states that the notion of "now" is subjective and dependent on the observer. This leads to the block universe concept, where past, present, and future all exist simultaneously, making the past just as real as the present. Hossenfelder also emphasizes that the fundamental laws of nature preserve information rather than destroy it. Although information about a deceased person disperses, it remains an integral part of the universe. This idea of timeless existence, derived from the study of fundamental physics, offers profound spiritual insights that can be difficult to internalize in our everyday lives. As a result, Hossenfelder encourages people to trust the scientific method and accept the profound implications of these discoveries, which may reshape our understanding of life and existence. As a physicist, Hossenfelder trusts the knowledge gained through the scientific method and acknowledges the challenge of integrating these deep insights into our daily experiences. By contemplating these profound concepts, we can potentially expand our understanding of reality and our place within it. 0:00 Is your dead grandma still alive? 1:25 Before Einstein… and after 2:53 Relativity of simultaneity, explained 5:14 Spacetime and the ‘block universe’ 6:10 Eternal existence: The conservation of quantum information 8:22 “I know it sounds crazy, but…” ------- Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• This popular emotional advice might backfire

  What if everything you’ve heard about managing emotions is wrong? Psychologist and author Ethan Kross challenges popular emotional advice, like the idea that venting is always helpful or that we should avoid emotions at all costs. He explains that regulation isn’t about quick fixes or staying in the moment constantly. Instead, it’s about building a flexible toolkit. ------- Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• Meet the scientist that made a machine to measure life itself | Lee Cronin

  **🧬 What *Is* Life, Really? And Could We Build It From Scratch?** What if the key to understanding life… is not *what it’s made of* — but *how it assembles*? Ask ten scientists “What is life?” and you’ll get a thousand different answers. But **Lee Cronin**, the chemist behind **Assembly Theory**, offers a radical simplification: > **Life is any system that can produce complexity at scale.** Not DNA, not metabolism — just *non-random complexity*, multiplied. ### 🔧 Enter “Assembly Theory” — Life by the Numbers Instead of asking “Does it have genes?” Cronin asks: **How much *selection* went into producing these objects?** - **Assembly Index**: How complex is an object — how many steps to make it? - **Multiply that by how many copies of it exist**, and you get a system’s *Assembly*. - The more **non-random complexity** at scale? The more likely you’re looking at life. In essence: > **Life is what happens when the universe gets choosy — and does it over and over again.** ### 🌌 Why This Changes Everything 1. **We can *measure* life**, not just define it vaguely. 2. **We can trace its evolution** anywhere — even on other planets. 3. **We might even build it.** Yep — **we might be close to creating life in a lab.** ### 🧪 The “Origin of Life” Machine Cronin and his team are building a **selection engine** — a machine designed to sift through random chemistry and spot the emergence of life-like behavior. They're targeting three critical time factors: 1. **Time to create** the object. 2. **Time until it decays** if left alone. 3. **Time it can persist** through generations in a living system. If a molecule scores high on all three? It might just be alive — or close. ### 🚀 How soon will we create synthetic life? No one knows. But Cronin believes it's not decades away. > “We now know what we’re looking for — and we’re building the tools to find it.” **✨ Big Idea:** What if “life” isn’t some magical property… but an **inevitable result** of chemistry and selection? If so, life may not be rare. It may be **written into the fabric of the universe**. About Lee Cronin: Leroy Cronin has one of the largest multidisciplinary, chemistry-based research teams in the world. He has given over 300 international talks and has authored over 350 peer-reviewed papers with recent work published in Nature, Science, and PNAS. He and his team are trying to make artificial life forms, find alien life, explore the digitization of chemistry, understand how information can be encoded into chemicals, and construct chemical computers. He went to the University of York where he completed both a degree and PhD in chemistry and then went on to do postdocs in Edinburgh and Germany before becoming a lecturer at the Universities of Birmingham, and then Glasgow where he has been since 2002, working up the ranks to become the Regius Professor of Chemistry in 2013 at age 39. Folllow this Podcast for daily Episodes ------- Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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