SUPER AGERS (Part 1): The Revolutionary New Science of Longevity

The Next Big Idea

Next Big Idea Club

Self-improvement, Arts, Books, Society & Culture, Education

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 17 July 2025

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For years, cardiologist Eric Topol hunted for the rarest people in America: those over 80 who had never been sick. When he finally found 1,400 of them, he made a shocking discovery. It wasn't their genes. These "super agers" were often the last ones standing in families where everyone else died decades earlier. So what separates people who live into their 80s or 90s feeling great from those who battle chronic disease? In his new book, Super Agers, Eric reveals what the science actually shows, shares practical advice you can use at any age, and takes on the bro scientists selling false promises along the way. This is part one of our interview with Eric. Part two will be available right here next week. If you can't until then, you can listen now on the Next Big Idea app: https://nextbigideaclub.com/app/

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Rufus Griscombe, and this is the next big idea.
0:07.0	Today, the Playbook for with a clean bill of health.
0:39.8	People who are frisky, socially engaged, and unburdened by age-related disease. In 2008, he decided to do something about
0:46.8	that fascination. Eric's a cardiologist and research scientist, so he did what he's trained to do.
0:57.0	He set up a study. He and his team at Scripps Research, the largest nonprofit biomedical institute in the United States, crisscrossed
1:02.5	the country, eventually signing up 1,400 participants. It took seven years to find these people
1:08.9	on a national hunt. They're just rarefied.
1:11.9	Essentially, the best part was to get their medical records because there was nothing in the medical records.
1:17.6	It's hard to overstate how unusual that is.
1:21.6	80% of Americans over the age of 65 have two or more chronic diseases.
1:32.5	Most of the time, that means they're dealing with one of the big four, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, or some kind of neurodegeneration.
1:36.9	But the super agers Eric and his team tracked down, they've never been sick.
1:41.9	They weren't even taking medication.
1:45.9	Eric and his team figured,
1:51.1	okay, it must be something in their genes. That must be why these folks have such exceptional health spans. So they did whole genome sequencing. And found basically that the genes were not
1:57.8	the story, except in, you know, rare situations out of that group.
2:02.2	Instead, the folks Eric studied, he calls them the welderly, were often the last one standing in their families.
2:10.7	And you say, well, hey, you know, you don't need a whole genome sequence to know that that's not genetics.
2:15.7	Because if it was, you wouldn't have only one person living
2:19.3	20, 30, 40 years beyond their closest relatives.
2:24.2	Longevity, Eric, says, is maybe 10% genetics.
2:28.6	So what's the other 90%?
	...

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