One Five Seven Years: Trailer
Limelight
BBC
4.4 • 698 Ratings
🗓️ 21 September 2022
⏱️ 3 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Imagine you could live for two lifetimes. Would you want to? How would it change you and those you love? What would you do with all those extra years? What second chances might you get? Would this be a blessing or a curse?
This world is an alternative version of our own. Except in this world, a minority of people are discovered to have Extended Life Syndrome (ELS). The condition might give an "Elser" two decades in their thirties, two in their forties, double the time in their fifties, and so on. Little is understood of the biological factors that govern ELS except that it affects a random selection of people. It is the ultimate lottery of genetics, crossing class, race, culture and gender.
And if a simple test existed to check your DNA for this double life, would you take it? Would you want to know?
Now think again. Would you?
An Afonica production for BBC Radio 4
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:07.6 | Would you have lived your life differently? |
| 0:10.7 | What? |
| 0:11.8 | If you'd known, as a young man, |
| 0:14.8 | that you were going to live such an impossibly long time, |
| 0:18.7 | would you have lived differently? |
| 0:26.6 | One, five, seven years. A new alternative reality series from Radio 4. Today, the number of UK diagnosed ELSA has reached one million people. So far, approximately |
| 0:34.6 | 30 million have been tested. Imagine you could live for two lifetimes. |
| 0:39.3 | Would you want to? |
| 0:40.3 | What would you do with all those extra years? |
| 0:43.3 | In Germany, a further 20,000 people have been diagnosed with extended life syndrome. |
| 0:49.3 | In this world, a minority of people are discovered to have extended life syndrome. |
| 0:55.0 | They're predicting 3% could have it. |
| 0:58.0 | And not just in Britain, that could be everywhere. |
| 1:01.0 | What's 3% of the world population? |
| 1:04.0 | ELS, the genetic condition that slows down aging, the sagging of the skin, deterioration of the brain. |
| 1:13.8 | All my life I've been told that I'm stupid, ugly, weak. |
| 1:19.8 | Turns out, that is scientifically, genetically, just not the case. |
| 1:26.2 | I do not have the gift. I am not like you. I do not have the gift. |
| 1:28.5 | I am not like you. |
| 1:30.3 | I am not like the others. |
| 1:32.7 | Why are we so afraid of dying? |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.