Why Scientists Can’t Agree on Aging

Curiosity Weekly

Warner Bros. Discovery

Science

4.6 • 935 Ratings

🗓️ 7 January 2026

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s a new year which means many of us are focusing on resolutions designed to take better care of our bodies as we age. But, even those conducting research on healthy aging find it a complicated concept to define. To help navigate the topic, Dr. Samantha Yammine is joined by Dr. Paul Robbins, a professor and co-director of the Masonic Institute on the Biology of Aging and Metabolism at the University of Minnesota. Then, Sam investigates what researchers learned from studying the biology and lifestyle of a woman who lived to the age of 117 and how manipulating the mitochondria in a cell can prevent degeneration.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's the New Year and with it comes the annual onslaught of New Year's resolutions.
0:06.0	Whether you're working on your posture or trying to decrease your screen time or even trying to spend more time with friends,
0:12.0	these goals have a way of showing us our priorities.
0:15.0	The most popular New Year's resolutions are often centered on money, getting fit, or aging in a healthier way. So let's talk about it.
0:23.7	The science of aging isn't just about living longer, but adding more healthy years to our lives.
0:29.4	And it's surprisingly complicated. So I'll be speaking to Dr. Paul Robbins to discuss how scientists
0:34.5	are currently looking at aging and how we can all use their knowledge
0:38.2	to better take care of ourselves, whether we're 25 or 85.
0:42.4	But first, I'll dig into what we can learn from a study of a woman who lived to be 117 years old.
0:48.7	And then finally, we'll talk about cellular aging and some new research on how mitochondria
0:53.6	may be able to slow that process down.
0:56.6	So happy new year. My name is Dr. Samantha Amin and this is Curiosity Weekly from Discovery.
1:02.9	Researchers look for the secrets to longevity by studying people who reach extreme ages.
1:08.7	One of them was Maria Brainias Morera, who lived to be 117 before her passing on
1:14.6	August 19, 24. She's what's called a super centenarian, someone who lives beyond the age of 110.
1:23.1	According to verified records from Guinness World Records and the gerontology research group,
1:34.3	Maria is the eighth oldest person ever, with the absolute oldest clocking in at 122. To learn more about how Maria may have lived so long, researchers met with her multiple times to collect urine, blood, and stool samples, and also interview her about her lifestyle. With this data, they were able to
1:45.8	build a robust profile of her health, characterizing her genetics, epigenetics, the proteins
1:51.4	and metabolites in her blood, and even her gut microbiome. They compared her profile with those of the
1:57.7	women living in the same Catalonia region of Spain and published the results in Cell Reports Medicine.
2:03.7	They found something I thought was pretty surprising.
2:06.7	Extreme age and poor health don't necessarily go hand in hand.
	...

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