You and Betty and the nancy's and Bill's and Joes and Jane's will find in the study of science a richer, more rewarding life.

Hey, welcome to Inquiring Minds. I'm Minds. This is a podcast where we explore the space where science and society collide.

We want to find out what's true, what's left to discover, and why it matters.

And, well, one thing that probably matters to every single one of us is life itself. And I think most of us probably want to live

if it means that we can enjoy good health for as long as possible. There's a growing industry

dedicated to defying aging from supplements and workouts to extreme measures that border on

starvation. But is there a fundamental biological

limit to our lifespan, even if we could solve many of the problems of aging? This is a hard question,

one that could probably earn someone a Nobel Prize. So let's talk to somebody who already has one.

Vanki Ramakrishna shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for uncovering the structure of the ribosone.

So let's hear what he has to say about why we die.

Thank you. Welcome to Inquiring Wines. Thank you.

Welcome to Inquiring Wines.

Thank you for having me.

It's a pleasure.

So let's start with our life expectancy.

The fact that I think the oldest person that has ever lived,

it has died at about 122,

what is the current extreme of life? There's a difference between how long we can

possibly live and how long we can expect to live on average. And the amount of life we can expect to

live on average has almost doubled in 150 years. So 150 years ago, we were lucky if we,

on average, lived to be about 40. But most of that is because when we were children, we'd die

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