How to Defy Death

How to Know What’s Real

The Atlantic Monthly Group, LLC

Education, Self-improvement, Science, Social Sciences, Society & Culture

4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Humans have always tried to prolong life and battle mortality, but what do the current influx of biohackers reveal about this era of individual responsibility? Timothy Caulfield, a professor and the research director at the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta, studies how health and science are represented in the public sphere. The lines between wellness culture, longevity, and biohacking are beginning to blur, and Caulfield offers advice about how to dodge misinformation and unproven theories while still pursuing a long and meaningful life. Listeners, how do you think about aging? Please leave us a voicemail (202-266-7701) with your name, your age, and answers to the following questions: What aspects of aging are you nervous about? What are you looking forward to as you age? Who do you hope to be like when you are older? Is there someone in your life who has made you excited to get older? Leaving a voicemail means that you are consenting to the possibility of The Atlantic using your audio in a future episode of How To. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:17.5	From startups to scaleups, online, in person, and on the go.
0:22.0	Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you.
0:24.5	Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup.
0:30.3	Do you want to live forever?
0:33.3	Hell no.
0:35.1	Absolutely not.
0:37.9	Of course I want to live like a long and healthy and happy life.
0:42.6	I would love to live to, like, 90.
0:45.2	You know, enjoy the time with my family and friends.
0:48.2	But, like, thinking about how tired I am now at 37,
0:52.1	like, can you imagine how exhausted you'd be at 100, 150?
0:57.0	I don't want to live forever, but I'm really scared of death.
1:01.0	I mean, it's kind of the one thing we really don't know anything about, right?
1:06.0	And I feel like I want to get to the bottom of everything.
1:09.0	I want the answers, and that's one we don't get answers about.
1:13.8	Maybe that's why we're so tired.
1:16.0	Exhausted.
1:17.5	I'm exhausted.
1:20.2	I'm Yasmin Tayyag, a staff writer with the Atlantic.
	...

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