0:02

heads up today's show does include a couple

0:04

of curse words so

0:06

anyway here we go

0:08

wait you're listening okay

0:11

all right okay all right

0:13

you're listening to radiolab

0:15

from wnyc six

0:24

you there hello hey hi this

0:29

is radiolab i'm latif nasser and

0:31

today um a

0:34

desperate crazy possibly futile

0:36

definitely foolhardy soul searching

0:38

journey from our

0:41

producer maria okay

0:45

so latif have you seen a

0:47

movie called the seventh seal oh

0:54

that's the ingmar bergman movie from like

0:56

the i don't know 50s yeah i

0:59

think i fell asleep during that movie

1:01

if i'm being honest okay

1:03

fair but

1:07

presumably you made it through the opening i

1:11

think so

1:13

so just to jog your memory the

1:16

film begins with this scene of

1:18

this night who's just

1:20

landed on a beach after spending

1:23

years abroad fighting this brutal bloody

1:25

war in the middle east the

1:28

crusades all right and he looks at

1:31

he has a face of someone

1:33

who's seen countless friends die right

1:35

has himself narrowly avoided death multiple

1:37

times right and he's finally made

1:39

it back to the shores of

1:42

his homeland he's packing up his

1:44

stuff when he looks up and

1:48

he sees this figure yeah

1:50

he didn't tall and pale

1:52

and dressed in black from head to

1:54

toe who

1:57

is of course death And

2:00

death is just like... You do the rest. Are

2:03

you ready? And

2:05

in that moment, as death inches towards

2:07

our knight to take his life, our

2:10

guy, our knight, he stands up,

2:12

he looks at death right in the eye

2:14

and says, Wait, don't worry. Wait, don't worry.

2:16

Wait. You're going to be a little bit shocked. What

2:20

if... What if we play

2:22

a game of chess? Chess? Yeah,

2:24

a game of chess. You can

2:26

end it very quickly, don't you? If I win,

2:29

you spare my life, and if I lose,

2:31

you do your thing. And death is

2:33

like... Game of the day. Let's

2:35

do this. So,

2:38

the rest of the movie is basically just this

2:40

game. In between moves, our knight, he

2:42

goes home, he sees his wife again,

2:44

he's eking out the last

2:47

bits of whatever life has to offer

2:49

before the end. I

2:52

take it he loses the chess game. Of course he

2:54

does. And

2:56

why are you telling me any of this? Because

3:02

seeing this knight just

3:04

reminded me that I'm

3:07

going to die one day. Right. I

3:09

mean, I've always thought about

3:12

death. My dad died when I was

3:14

a year old, and so from a young age, I

3:16

always had this sense that life, it

3:18

can be cut short at any moment.

3:22

And my whole life I've been trying to make sense of

3:24

why it is that we're given this thing to have it

3:26

just kind of be taken away.

3:31

So for me, when I saw this knight, maybe it

3:33

seems pointless, but I was just like, that,

3:35

this... It

3:38

felt like this beautiful, compelling act of resistance,

3:40

and it made me think, I

3:43

want to do that. What? I

3:47

want to challenge death. So

3:50

that is what we're going to do today here.

3:53

I am challenging death to

3:56

a chess match a sword,

3:59

a duel. You could say. Okay.

4:02

Who? I don't know. I guess.

4:10

Um, so

4:12

obviously death was not

4:14

available. Okay. Too busy

4:16

ending lives left and right. Okay, alright.

4:19

So I called a team of people who could

4:21

stand in for death or play on death's behalf.

4:24

You're flat. A couple of ecologists. We're

4:26

all gonna die. An evolutionary biologist. Death

4:28

is inevitable. An astrophysicist. Death is

4:30

just simply part of being a human.

4:33

And an anthropologist. Everything dies.

4:36

Okay, so why have we assembled all

4:38

these very morbid people together? All these

4:40

scientists, they know death. They know how it

4:42

works. And so I just asked them if

4:45

I was to play a game of tests

4:47

with death, if

4:49

I could do my version of

4:51

that test match from the movie,

4:53

what would death's move be? Like,

4:56

how would death come from me? And

4:58

my thought is maybe there's a

5:01

move that I can make to

5:03

like outwit and basically

5:05

beat death. Okay, alright.

5:09

Okay, I mean, I think I know how this

5:11

is gonna go, but let's do it. Hell

5:14

yeah. So,

5:20

death's first move, courtesy

5:22

of evolutionary

5:25

bio-gerontologist Steven Ostad. One,

5:28

two, three, six, nine, twelve, fifteen. Ecologist

5:30

Roberto Salguero Gomez. Just call me

5:32

Rob. If you call me Roberto, I'll think it's my mother, tell

5:34

me off. And anthropologist Gabriela Contreras.

5:36

Yeah, of course. Hi. Is

5:39

basically... You know when you wake up and

5:41

you leave your house, you might get hit

5:43

all the time. Shit happens. You

5:46

could be run by a bus. God forbid. You

5:48

could have a safe call on your head.

5:50

Or you could be killed by a cold

5:52

snap, by heavy storms. Mm-hmm. Any

5:55

stochasticity in your life, and

5:57

then you're gone. And the longer you live, the...

6:00

The more chance there is of something awful happening

6:02

to you, because

6:05

that's how life works. All

6:07

these accidents, they're just little minions.

6:09

They're kind of just like waiting

6:11

for us to, waiting

6:13

for me to slip and fall so

6:16

that I can eventually meet my maker.

6:18

I love how you slip between the us and

6:20

the me. You're gonna die with me

6:22

London! So

6:25

my first move in the game is like, that's

6:27

fine. I can be careful. I can just

6:29

stay home. I can use

6:31

a water purifier. Employ a food taste

6:34

tester in case there's any poisons that

6:36

happen to fall into your food. I

6:38

can just wear a helmet. Wear 10

6:40

helmets. You can wear

6:42

like a, like styrofoam padding, just like

6:44

around your body at all times. Even

6:47

random things like earthquakes. Yeah. I

6:50

downloaded an app that will give me two

6:52

minutes to leave the building in

6:55

case everything is collapsing

6:57

around me. And you're gonna make sure your phone never

6:59

runs out of battery, I guess, or? I

7:02

got a backup. Okay, you got, okay. Great.

7:05

But of course, my

7:08

experts told me that even if I

7:10

bubble wrap myself, instead of my apartment,

7:12

watching my earthquake app, that doesn't protect

7:14

me from. Disease. We

7:17

can get influenza. We could

7:19

get diabetes. We could get

7:22

asthma. Diseases that might just

7:24

kill me outright or. Kidney failure.

7:26

Cancer or heart disease. Might

7:29

just set me up

7:31

for death next move, which is, what,

7:33

in car? To play the long game.

7:36

You deteriorate as you get older,

7:38

right? Yeah. Let me give you

7:40

an example. Do you own a car? I own a car. Awesome.

7:43

Can I ask you how old is your car? So

7:47

get in there, right? Yeah. You

7:49

know, with time, there are some things that you need to take

7:51

it back to the car workshop four

7:53

to six because parts were out. For

7:56

instance, the heart, it's a muscle. You

7:58

know, a muscle eventually. we were out.

8:01

One of those essential organs gives out? You're dead.

8:03

But people have heart transplants, people have

8:06

kidney transplants. Who cares? Yes, indeed.

8:08

That's what I was saying. You are

8:10

on my side. Welcome. Welcome to the

8:12

dark side. Yeah. Okay. Let's just do

8:14

some transplants. You could, you can

8:17

in theory replace parts, but if you allow

8:19

me the biological analogy, there'll be some organs

8:21

within the car that once they fail, you'll

8:23

be like, you know what? I'm done and

8:26

that's what this car. For instance, our brains.

8:28

I mean, maybe parts of it. Okay. But

8:30

if you lost your memory, would you be

8:32

the same person? Just

8:35

all of a sudden got a lot less

8:37

abstract. Right. Okay. Yeah,

8:40

I guess. I

8:45

don't know. I'm not sure. I don't want

8:47

to sound too negative about this. But

8:49

at some point, that starts to go even

8:51

in the healthiest among us. You know, it's

8:54

I think of it like bending a tree

8:56

branch. It'll bend, it'll bend, it'll bend

8:58

and finally it breaks. And

9:00

that's what happens with aging. Okay, so how are

9:02

you going to buttress this tree branch? What are

9:05

you going to do against aging? Well,

9:08

look, today we live way longer

9:10

than we have ever before, in part

9:12

because we eat better and have

9:14

modern medicine. And so I'm just

9:17

going to dial in the perfect

9:19

lifestyle. Like, what

9:22

if I just eat an

9:25

absurd amount of vegetables and fruits?

9:27

Only super foods, eat avocados and

9:30

brand flakes for every meal. I'm

9:32

definitely drinking plenty

9:34

of water. Great. Right. And no smoking.

9:36

You cannot smoke. Not

9:40

smoking is a good start, but it's still not

9:42

going to stop you from dying. Yeah, no, Maripa's

9:45

aging. Everyone told

9:47

me that trying to fight off

9:49

aging with diet or vitamins,

9:52

it's just not going to cut it.

9:54

There are literally hundreds of theories about

9:56

why we age and they involve all

9:58

these different things that I barely

10:00

understand, but whatever. I'm going to name

10:02

off. Okay. They include genomic

10:05

instability, polymeric attrition,

10:07

epigenetic alterations, loss

10:09

of proteo-stasis,

10:12

deregulated nutrients, and seeing mitochondrial

10:15

dysfunction. Okay, okay, okay.

10:18

I have no idea what you're talking about. No, no, no,

10:20

there's more. Cellular senescence, stem

10:23

cellar glossary. Okay, okay, I got it. I'm

10:25

also exhausted, and it sounds like what you're

10:27

saying is like brand

10:29

flakes are not going to hit any of these

10:32

things. Yeah, I mean the point is aging.

10:35

It's like a house of cards

10:37

or the most intricate domino line

10:39

thing. And to this day, scientists haven't

10:41

been able to pin down exactly why

10:43

we age, but what

10:46

they do know is aging

10:49

happens down at the most

10:51

fundamental level of all living

10:53

things. Yes. It all

10:55

boils down to what's going on inside

10:57

your cells. Yeah, like literally just

10:59

by existing, your cells are

11:01

getting damaged. In particular, I

11:03

learned that the thing that's being damaged

11:06

is the DNA inside your

11:08

cells. Your genetic material, your

11:10

essence. That little coil of

11:12

molecules that tells your cells what

11:14

to do. The information of you.

11:17

The DNA is being damaged 10,000

11:19

or more times a day. Right

11:21

now. Right now. Okay, great. So

11:23

great. Like you just walk outside

11:26

on any given morning. You are

11:28

exposed to sunlight. UV radiation. So

11:30

that UV that's damaging your cells. That's

11:32

damaging the DNA in your skin cells.

11:35

Great. Or just take

11:37

a breath. Pollution. Little

11:41

bits of random stuff in the air damages

11:43

the DNA inside our lung cells. Exactly.

11:46

Exactly. So you're under

11:48

this vast assault. But

11:51

that seems beatable. What? No, no,

11:53

it really doesn't. It really does

11:56

not sound beatable. Yes. I

11:58

mean, I'll just take my helmet. and

12:00

my good diet and my vitamins and

12:03

I'll move to somewhere with clean mountain

12:05

air like some remote part of the

12:07

world. I'll move to Antarctica. Okay. And

12:09

then I'll find a cave to keep

12:11

out of the sun. No. And

12:14

then I'll just live in

12:16

space. Perfect plan. I

12:18

thought so. No. Still unfortunately,

12:20

you have to keep eating to

12:22

stay alive. So eating, my experts

12:25

tell me, down at the cell level. That's

12:28

really just a fire. A fire

12:30

inside us? Yeah. Just

12:32

like a fire. Like take

12:34

a campfire. That is just oxygen

12:37

having a chemical reaction

12:40

with the wood. Yeah.

12:42

Right. And inside each and every single one

12:44

of our cells, we're

12:47

combining oxygen and carbohydrates basically

12:49

to get energy. But just

12:51

like fire has side effects

12:53

like smoke and sparks and

12:56

all our metabolism, that's damaging

12:58

our cells. And

13:00

damaging the DNA. The

13:03

essence of you. You know,

13:05

I'm not happy about that, but it's

13:08

a fact. So the way

13:10

Gabriela and Steven laid it out

13:12

for me is that the instructions

13:14

for the cells over time become

13:17

jankier and jankier. So our cells

13:19

over time become more and more messed

13:22

up, which then messes up our organs.

13:25

Every part of us, it all

13:27

begins to fall apart. And

13:30

ultimately that doesn't fit. And

13:32

so, well, I can't really remember why

13:34

we're going with this, but yeah, you have to eat.

13:37

By the way, do you have any questions? No, no.

13:39

I mean, well, just one thing that I feel

13:42

like I noticed the idea that the

13:44

sun is like the source

13:46

of all our energy that we need

13:48

to survive and then yet literally

13:52

damages us. And then

13:54

eating is the way that we get that

13:56

energy into our system. And then

13:58

that actually is damaging. us too

14:00

while we're doing that. Like it's like this

14:02

feels like a kind of a, I mean,

14:05

you're, we're not done yet. I mean, maybe you

14:07

are, but I'm not because as I was researching

14:09

the DNA damage stuff, I discovered that

14:11

there are parts of the DNA and

14:13

parts of this cell that are on

14:16

my team. Wait, like how,

14:18

how so? There are actually

14:20

like these little enzymes that can go

14:22

in and take a damaged part of

14:24

your DNA and remove it and

14:26

re-synthesize the original part to get it

14:28

back to working the way it was before all

14:30

the damage. Oh, all right. Okay.

14:33

So I was like, why can't the repair team

14:35

just go in there and take care of all

14:37

this damage from the sun and the

14:40

air and whatever? Um,

14:42

yeah, well, there's really no way

14:45

that we can fix all of that

14:48

damage with 100% fidelity. Like

14:51

think of a jumper, right? You've got like

14:53

a knitted jumper and it's perfect. Um,

14:57

bear with me on this one. Maybe you like

14:59

catch it on a branch, right? And

15:01

like one piece of thread becomes unraveled

15:03

a little bit, but that's okay because you know

15:05

how to sew. So that's your cells repairing themselves.

15:08

You've just repaired like an issue. Great. But

15:10

then, you know, you accidentally walk

15:13

through a really stony bush and now you've

15:15

got like 10 threads that have been

15:17

pulled out. And actually each of those

15:19

threads is connected to more threads. And

15:22

now you've got holes and maybe they do

15:24

get repaired, but just not quick enough. So

15:26

by the time one hole is patched up,

15:28

there's already another one. And now

15:30

you've got this kind of jumper. That's a

15:33

big mix of like holes and repaired pieces.

15:35

And eventually your jumper is like not a,

15:38

not a jumper anymore. It just stops working

15:40

as a jumper. So you die.

15:43

And at this point, that's when I realized that our

15:45

bodies, that my body is not even

15:47

on my team is actually on death

15:50

team. Because as we get older,

15:52

the body takes the energy away from the

15:54

repair processes. And when you do that,

15:56

of course, things don't get repaired.

15:59

Believe it or not. Steven says, in

16:02

an evolutionary sense, this

16:04

holds decaying, deteriorating, dying thing

16:06

was the plan all along.

16:08

You know, the way our bodies are

16:11

built now is a consequence of human

16:13

evolution in an environment that for most

16:15

of that time was very, very different.

16:17

Without sanitation or modern medicine, people didn't

16:20

even make it into old age. No,

16:23

300,000 years ago, most people were dead by

16:25

the time they were 60. A

16:27

lion would get us, there would be a drought, there

16:29

would be a fire. We'd eat

16:31

some food that was tainted. Good

16:34

times, the glory days. Yeah, pretty

16:36

much. And if that is the

16:38

case, then from an evolutionary standpoint,

16:41

the idea is to reproduce

16:43

before the inevitable accident happens

16:45

to you. So,

16:49

Steven says, you put less energy

16:51

into fixing the damage in your body, and

16:54

you put it towards reproduction. And of

16:56

course, if you allocate all of your

16:58

resources to reproduction, you've

17:00

got none left for you.

17:03

And that's why it's really

17:05

important that we don't confuse

17:07

being evolutionarily successful with health.

17:11

Evolution doesn't care if you

17:13

are healthy. It cares if you

17:16

are healthy enough to reproduce.

17:22

At that point, how are you feeling, Lutus? Well,

17:25

just like there's conflicting priorities here in

17:27

the design. It's like this thing, everybody

17:29

and me as well, like, gets pissed

17:31

about, like, phones. It's like planned obsolescence,

17:34

like, they make the thing... I

17:36

know. So that it will break,

17:40

so that you'll buy a new

17:42

one. That's the capitalism version, but

17:44

the evolution version is like, clear

17:46

this thing out of the way, so

17:48

there's room for the new models. Yes.

17:51

I mean, people are variable. We all

17:53

have different inheritance of genes.

17:55

We all survive

17:57

in different environments. years

18:00

is about as long as we

18:02

can last, given the way our

18:04

current body is built. I

18:07

mean Maria Potts, like from the

18:09

accident to the the eating and

18:11

the fire inside and the air

18:13

you're breathing and the DNA damage

18:15

and like even like even evolution

18:17

is is against you here. Like

18:19

this feels like a checkmate to

18:21

me. Fine, I mean sure it's

18:23

a checkmate for you and me,

18:26

but I am here on

18:28

behalf of humanity, Lutus, including

18:30

your children. My children?

18:32

Yeah, maybe future

18:35

generations don't have to put up with any of

18:37

this. Maybe they don't have to die. I

18:39

mean I think my kids are fine, MPG. Well

18:41

tell you what, we're gonna take a break now. So

18:45

you have some time to go talk to them and

18:47

you can ask them, do you want to die? But

18:51

either way, get ready. Because

18:55

when we come back, we

18:58

are gonna play this game to

19:02

the end of everything.

19:04

That'll be great. Okay.

19:24

So Lutus

19:26

Radiolab here today with Maria

19:28

Paz-Gutieres on her increasingly quixotic

19:31

effort to outdo the one

19:33

absolute truth of all human

19:35

existence and all life, which

19:38

is of course death. Yep,

19:41

that's me. And before the break, you were gonna

19:43

take the game, I don't

19:45

know, into the future to see

19:47

if you can win on behalf

19:49

of my children and or all

19:52

future generations. Right, so a quick

19:54

recap might help. Remember how our death

19:56

experts told us that evolution was like, I don't care

19:58

if your DNA gets all day. damage than you

20:00

die because I just want you to

20:02

have babies. Yeah, that was sobering.

20:05

Well, those babies get their

20:07

fresh start in part because

20:09

the body has a kind of

20:11

trump card cell. The

20:14

stem cell. A stem cell

20:16

is a cell in your body that has

20:18

DNA, the instructions for making and being you,

20:20

that has been in a sense protected from

20:22

the damage of living life. It

20:25

hasn't made any copies of itself. Some

20:27

stem cells have the potential to

20:29

become a fresh version of basically

20:32

any other cell in your body.

20:34

A liver cell, a skin cell,

20:36

a toe cell, an eyeball cell,

20:38

whatever. Love me some stem cells. How about

20:40

this new at six, a breakthrough in reversing

20:42

the signs of aging? Researchers say...

20:44

So in just the last several years, scientists have started

20:46

to figure out how to use stem cells. Scientists

20:49

have rejuvenated the skin

20:51

cells taken from a

20:53

53-year-old woman... ...to replace

20:55

cells that have been damaged or even

20:59

turn regular old

21:01

cells back into

21:03

stem cells. Really? Yeah. To your point, I

21:05

mean, it sounds like science fiction. I mean, he's taking

21:07

these... Mostly in lab mice at the moment. We're restoring

21:09

vision and we don't know where this is going, but

21:11

by 2050, we're going to be able to restore a

21:14

lot of things that get damaged. But there are some

21:16

big name labs working on this stuff for humans and

21:18

they're being backed by big money. Jeff Bezos

21:20

is spending billions... ...the Amazon founder

21:22

reportedly made a significant investment in

21:24

a company called Alto Slaps. So

21:28

eventually this could be a way to beat the whole

21:30

DNA cell damage thing that seems to be at the

21:32

root of aging. It's going to happen. It's

21:34

like asking the Wright brothers, are we going to fly? Well,

21:36

of course we are. It's just a question of when. But,

21:41

I mean, like, isn't this one of those things where someone's

21:43

always saying this is 20 years away and 20 years away...

21:46

...and it's always 20 years away and then it never

21:48

happens? Yeah, sure. Maybe. I mean, I don't

21:50

know. But what I do know is that I'm

21:52

on team maybe... ...maybe one day. And

21:54

just to make this maybe a little bit

21:57

more concrete, I will say that there are...

22:00

animals in the natural world already out there

22:02

that do this kind of thing. Really? Yeah.

22:04

You ever hear of the immortal jellyfish? No.

22:07

Oh my god. I figured you would. This

22:09

is a bit shocking. Okay. Alright. Okay.

22:11

Tell me. Tell me. So the immortal

22:13

jellyfish is this tiny little

22:16

jellyfish. It's like the

22:18

size of your pinky-nailed tiny. Okay.

22:21

It's translucent. Has these like tiny

22:24

little pentacles. Cute. It's so cute. It's

22:27

originally from the Mediterranean but has some

22:29

spread all over. It's a bit of

22:31

an invasive species. Okay. I mean that's whatever.

22:34

Anyway. But- I mean if you're a mortal

22:36

it feels like that's inevitable. Anyway,

22:38

keep going. That's true. And

22:41

this jellyfish, it can have baby

22:43

jellyfish like a normal sea creature

22:45

would. But also it's different because

22:47

when it experiences stress, it can

22:50

trigger this developmental trick. Hmm.

22:52

If you try to kill it,

22:54

it does not die. This

22:57

is over the- The cells

22:59

in its body can revert

23:01

back to the baby versions

23:03

of themselves. And then this

23:05

clump of polyps just grows

23:07

back into being a new

23:09

jellyfish that's genetically identical to

23:11

its original cells. It's

23:16

funny like the image I have when you describe that

23:18

is like sneaking up on

23:20

like a 90 year old

23:22

and scaring them from behind and then

23:24

they turn into a baby. That's pretty

23:26

much its superpower. I love that. That's

23:28

amazing. And it can just do that

23:30

over and over as many times as

23:32

it wants? So they

23:34

haven't actually studied the jellyfish for long enough to

23:36

know how many times it can pull the trick.

23:39

Maybe not forever. Hmm. And before anyone

23:41

tries to jump in and destroy my

23:43

hope, I am aware that of

23:46

course the immortal jellyfish could always just get

23:48

eaten by a turtle or

23:50

crushed by a rock. But still,

23:53

this jellyfish does feel like a

23:55

glimmer of hope. Like,

23:58

there could be some kind of- of

24:00

genetic loopholes to fight back against the DNA

24:02

and the cell wear and tear. Like

24:05

fingernail sized loophole here. Yeah.

24:08

Why can't we just be the jellyfish?

24:11

You want to be an immortal jellyfish? Cool. Awesome.

24:14

I hope you get reincarnated as an immortal jellyfish

24:17

so that in that way you can live for

24:19

a long time and have no recollection of

24:21

that life before. This is Chris Schell.

24:23

He's an urban ecologist at the University of

24:25

California, Berkeley. If you would like to do that, that's

24:28

cool. His point is, if you're

24:30

constantly trying to revert back to the baby

24:32

blobby version of yourself, it's not like you'd

24:34

be able to take your memories with you.

24:37

So at that point, it wouldn't even be

24:39

clear in what sense you

24:41

would even be you. It

24:44

feels like you're just a clone or

24:46

a facsimile of what you used to be.

24:49

And I don't think most human beings would

24:51

opt into that life. And talking to

24:53

Chris kind of flipped this whole little game I've

24:55

been playing on its head. Let's

24:58

be blunt. The equation for life includes

25:00

death. Including

25:04

what it would even mean for me

25:07

to win. Let's play this

25:09

out. So starting now,

25:12

everything from here on out

25:14

is immortal. All of

25:16

the things in your world that currently exist

25:23

cannot die. Death is off the table, right? There

25:26

are a bunch of folks cheering and being like, I'm

25:29

never going to die. Okay,

25:32

cool. Now think about

25:35

the ways in which individual animals

25:37

or people or plants or bacteria

25:39

or whatever is living dies. Take

25:43

cicadas. They explode into

25:45

these huge swarms. And then

25:47

after some singing and some

25:49

sex, they die. And

25:52

there on the ground are the

25:54

shells they've left behind. as

26:00

energy for other organisms. Which

26:02

helps the forest grow. And

26:05

that's just one bug. You

26:07

know, there's scavengers and mushrooms

26:09

and mice and people, all

26:11

of them, a whole ecosystem

26:13

that's either feeding off death

26:16

or dying and becoming food for something

26:18

else. But in this reality,

26:21

in this reality, nothing's dying anymore.

26:23

That means that that energy, it's

26:26

gone. So if we're not getting new energy

26:28

for new things to grow, we may be

26:30

at stasis, y'all. That

26:32

means potentially no new babies,

26:34

no new life, no change in

26:37

that system. Because if everything is

26:39

immortal, then why would

26:41

you end up having selection for certain

26:43

traits to allow for those organisms to

26:46

be better suited for the environment? Why

26:48

does it matter? They're not gonna die

26:50

anyway. Chris says in a world where nothing

26:52

dies. Life essentially halts

26:55

at a standstill. And

26:58

yeah, everything is alive to exist

27:00

in this new reality. But it

27:02

doesn't change. It doesn't morph. It

27:04

doesn't evolve. It isn't dynamic. The

27:06

extravagant, extraordinary biomes that we currently

27:08

have that exist on this planet,

27:12

they all stop. It

27:15

would be as if we were living in

27:17

a photograph of the world as we know

27:19

it. Just frozen in

27:21

time. Living in a world like that

27:23

gets really boring really quickly. To the

27:25

point where, why did

27:28

we want to have immortality in the

27:30

first place when the world

27:32

that we envisioned having immortality in

27:34

no longer exists? I

27:37

don't think I want to win this game anymore.

27:39

This sounds worse than

27:41

death, actually. I

27:43

don't know. Really? You

27:46

would take the frozen photograph?

27:48

Well, it's just that in

27:51

the face of death, like in

27:54

the face of a moment where the

27:57

life of someone you love has suddenly

27:59

been taken. from you or

28:02

even just like having to face

28:04

the moment where your own life where

28:07

all the things that you've done

28:09

and dreamed and schemed and built

28:12

might just blink out of existence in

28:15

the face of that I might

28:17

honestly consider the comfort of

28:20

being able to live

28:22

in a photograph. But

28:24

it's frozen, it's a plateau. Like

28:27

you'll never, everything will

28:29

be so mundane

28:32

and same that it'll be like

28:34

we're all just going to be

28:36

on cruise control forever and there

28:38

won't be any highs or lows

28:40

or like there won't be any

28:43

like for me I don't know that

28:45

doesn't, doesn't feel like

28:47

life. It's the

28:49

change that's really important to

28:52

being alive. So this is Jana Levin, she's

28:54

an astrophysicist and she happens to subscribe to

28:56

your point of view. Right

28:58

now in talking to you my

29:00

thoughts are changing and I'm experiencing

29:02

that and I'm watching the passage

29:05

of time by a clock changing.

29:07

And when I told Jana about

29:09

my game, this match that I'm

29:11

playing against death, she

29:14

pretty much immediately hit me with what

29:16

felt like the ultimate move because according

29:18

to her... eventually the entire

29:20

universe probably has to

29:22

die. This march

29:25

towards death is

29:27

a physical law of the universe. And

29:29

that idea comes from the second law

29:31

of thermodynamics that... So what you need

29:33

to understand is that the most fundamental

29:36

fact about living things is that they

29:38

are orderly arrangements of stuff. We're born

29:40

in some sense in an extremely ordered

29:42

state. Each part of us is

29:45

in its place interacting with other parts in

29:47

very orderly ways. I wake up, I

29:49

think things. I know who I am. That's

29:53

a very ordered state. I have

29:55

a look a particular way. I don't

29:57

look wildly different tomorrow. face

30:00

isn't scrambled, that's

30:02

what it means to be me to

30:05

be alive. The problem, Janice says, is

30:08

the second law of thermodynamics. Which

30:12

says that in general, over time,

30:14

things get more and more

30:16

disorderly. On average,

30:19

entropy, which is a measure of

30:21

disorder, will always increase.

30:23

Things will always tend to get more

30:25

disordered. And Janice says that this move

30:27

toward disorder or decay or deterioration is

30:29

just the basic fact of

30:31

the passage of time. You

30:34

can literally see it. If you look at

30:36

a flower and you watch a

30:39

movie where a rotten flower lifts

30:41

itself back up, becomes

30:43

incredibly perfect again instead of little

30:45

pieces on the ground, you know

30:47

you're watching that backwards. Like

30:49

the felt experience of time, that

30:52

just is decay, deterioration,

30:54

death. But

30:58

we can make things more orderly.

31:00

We can fix things that are

31:02

broken. Like every day, new

31:04

orderly little living things are born.

31:07

Right, but creating that life for that order,

31:09

it requires work. All

31:12

living things on earth, if you trace it

31:14

back, they get their energy to live and

31:16

grow and make new life from the sun,

31:18

right? Right. But if

31:21

you zoom out, you'll notice that overall,

31:24

this order is still

31:26

increasing. Like sure, you created

31:28

something orderly here on earth,

31:31

but all the while, the sun is

31:33

burning up its fuel. All of its

31:35

light and heat and energy is spewing

31:37

out across the solar system, spreading out

31:39

further and further. And

31:41

the sun will eventually run out

31:43

of thermonuclear fuel and it will

31:47

kind of cool and turn redder and distend

31:49

and bloat out and vaporize the inner planet.

31:51

Do we have a timeline for when the

31:54

sun is going to die? It's a few

31:56

billion years. Okay. Plenty

31:59

of time. But eventually, even if we

32:01

found some way to travel near the speed

32:03

of light to another star system and find

32:05

another planet, and set

32:07

up colonies or whatever we could

32:09

do, we could skip around the

32:11

galaxy trying to keep going. It

32:14

doesn't matter. Those new planets,

32:16

those new stars will

32:18

eventually burn out too until...

32:21

There are no more galaxies, no more black holes,

32:23

no more stars, no more people, no more planets,

32:25

nothing ordered. Just random motions

32:27

of particles, but they're all so far

32:29

apart that they can't even notice each other.

32:35

That is a universe which cannot experience

32:38

change, and where there cannot be things

32:40

like thoughts, and there cannot

32:42

be creatures with minds that have thoughts. In

32:45

some sense, the universe has gotten so cold

32:47

that it's effectively died.

32:59

Okay, that's your checkmate. That's the final

33:01

checkmate. Yeah, yeah, it feels that way.

33:05

It sounds like you need a drink right now. I need

33:07

so much in my life. I am

33:09

empty. But

33:13

can I make a confession? Sure. I

33:18

figured I'd lose. But

33:21

you know how the knight from the Seven

33:23

Seal is playing chess against death, but really

33:26

he's just buying himself time so that he

33:28

can go home and see his wife? Right,

33:30

right. This whole time, I was

33:32

hoping not so

33:35

much that I would win, although that would

33:37

have been nice, but truly

33:40

I was just hoping I'd be able

33:42

to find a satisfying

33:45

answer to the question of why. Why

33:50

do we die? Or like,

33:54

why do we have to die? Geez,

33:58

why do we die? you're

34:00

talking about that today. I just lost both

34:02

my grandparents. One after another.

34:04

And as I was reporting out this story,

34:06

I asked philosophers,

34:09

musicians, friends, and

34:11

even people on the street. Why

34:15

do we die? That's a very common

34:17

question to ask when you're in the kind

34:19

of existential crisis you're having. I

34:23

think we die because... Because it's

34:25

hard to exist forever. Because

34:27

we have to. Because of our

34:30

life. Yeah, I mean, what's the alternative? We

34:32

get old, we get tired, and we

34:34

wither away. Everybody. There's no way out

34:36

of this. And they said all kinds

34:39

of different things. I could imagine myself

34:41

dying of old age, like after a

34:43

big family meal where everyone's gathered, and

34:45

I ate way too many oysters and

34:48

lobster, and I drank champagne even

34:50

though I'm like 98, and I

34:52

mixed up my sleep. I

34:55

thought I just gave up. Time to move on to

34:57

the next... No more problems, no more worries.

34:59

Just peace forever. I mean, when is your

35:01

time? Is your day? Yeah, everything has just

35:04

come to an end. The good

35:06

things, the bad things. Nothing you can do about

35:08

that? I am surprised I'm alive today. I've

35:10

never expected to live this long. I'm in the

35:12

middle of the deaths right now. But listening back...

35:14

Why do I think we die? That's

35:17

a good question. Maybe it was

35:19

a good question. They were all saying

35:21

the same thing. I have no fucking

35:24

clue. Why do you ask why all the

35:26

time? Just, you know, get on with it. You

35:28

know, the why is the motherfucker. You were never

35:30

figured out. Why? Because it's not meant to

35:32

be figured out. You

35:34

just got to come to the understanding of what life

35:36

is. What is life? Life is death. Life

35:43

is death. And

35:48

so do you understand why? Do you kind of

35:50

understand why we die? No.

36:00

You know, there's something that happens.

36:03

Yes. Maria,

36:07

you asked this question knowing full well you weren't

36:09

going to get a straight answer from anybody, right?

36:12

I know you did. And

36:15

even in this conversation, it's as if

36:17

we are trying to put words that

36:19

help us control our own

36:21

understandings and conceptions of death. And

36:23

really, at the end of the

36:25

day, death doesn't care. Death

36:28

does not care. It doesn't care if

36:30

you understand the process of death or

36:32

what it is or how important it

36:34

is. It's going to happen

36:37

regardless. Everyone will die. Honestly,

36:39

life is the anomaly, right?

36:41

Also, the majority of other

36:43

planets in our solar system and

36:46

in other solar systems across

36:48

the vastness of the universe does

36:50

not have life. We are

36:52

the exception. We're not the rule. Death

36:55

is a neutral state, right? Nothing

36:57

things be in nothingness is the

36:59

neutral state. We are surrounded by

37:02

a vast ocean

37:04

of blackness. So

37:06

just take solace in the fact that

37:10

in the very small, very,

37:12

very rare percentage of life

37:14

succeeding, we made it, y'all.

37:18

We made the sweet stakes. Be

37:20

happy that we made the sweet stakes. Might

37:22

as well enjoy it while we got it. And

37:25

eventually, when the universe dies,

37:27

who knows? It may be

37:29

reborn in a different form

37:31

with different functions, with different

37:33

rules. We just don't know. Yeah.

37:37

Let's see. How can I say this? There

37:42

is another possibility for immortality.

37:46

We have to remember, just like our

37:49

star turned out not to be the only

37:51

star, our planet turned out not to be

37:53

the only planet, our galaxy turned out not

37:55

to be the only galaxy, our universe might

37:58

not be the only universe. We

38:00

don't understand the laws of physics well

38:02

enough yet to be able to confidently

38:05

state, if this is a

38:07

fluke, like if a universe that includes

38:09

life is a fluke, or

38:11

if it's the opposite,

38:14

that it's plentiful. Maybe

38:16

there are other universes. They're

38:18

disconnected from ours and have histories and

38:20

futures that are disconnected from ours.

38:22

We can't point to them in space

38:24

or in time. Theoretically, if

38:28

there's a multiverse, we're just one

38:30

in a vast collection of

38:33

other universes. And

38:35

some of those universes will

38:37

not be able to support life,

38:40

but we can imagine that some will.

38:44

So, potentially,

38:46

even after our universe dies, there is life

38:48

out there, even if it's

38:50

not us. Life

38:53

is plentiful in the multiverse. It's

38:57

like life never really wins the game against

38:59

death, but... death never

39:01

really wins either. Yeah.

39:27

This episode was reported by Maria

39:30

Paz Gutierrez and produced by Maria

39:32

Paz with help from Alyssa Jung

39:34

Perry and Timmy Broderick. Sound and

39:36

music from, once again, Maria Paz

39:38

Gutierrez, as well as Jeremy Bloom,

39:41

mixing help from Arianne Whack.

39:44

Special thanks to Wayne

39:46

Coyne of The Flaming

39:48

Lips, Steven Nadler, Beth

39:50

Jarrad, Anjana Badrinarayanan, Shaon

39:52

Chakrabarti, Bob Horvitz, John

39:54

K. Davis, Jessica Brand, Chandan

39:57

K. Sen, Cole Imperi,

40:00

Carl Bergstrom, Aaron Gentry

40:02

Lamb, and Jared Silpia.

40:05

This episode was made in

40:07

loving memory of Dali Rodriguez.

40:11

This is Radiolab, I'm Lathif Nasser.

40:14

Thanks for listening. Hi,

40:33

I'm Aiza, and I'm

40:35

Please Let Me Start. Radiolab

40:38

was created

40:41

by Chad Belmette and is edited by Soren

40:43

Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Rachif

40:45

Nasser are co-hosts. Dylan Keith

40:47

is our director of Pundit Club. And

40:50

our staff includes Simon Arvin,

40:52

Jeremy Bloom, Betha Bressa,

40:55

and Teddy Foster-Keebs, Debbie

40:57

Harry-Bortona, David Gable, Maria

40:59

Paz-Katyas, Sindhu Nainesom-Baron, Max

41:02

guilty, Annie McEwen,

41:04

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41:06

Khari, Sarah Sandbach,

41:08

Arianne Flapp, Tapp Walters, and

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Molly Webster. The best trickers

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