On this episode of the Big Brains podcast, Nobel laureate Venki Ramakrishnan digs into why humans die—and how we can live longer.

They’re perhaps the oldest questions in the science: Why do we die? And could we find a way to live forever?

But for decades, anti-aging research was a “backwater” of the scientific community, considered too fanciful and unrealistic. That is until the last few years. Modern advances in biology have taught us a lot about how we age and why we die—could that knowledge help us turn back the clock?

In his new book, Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality (2024, Harper Collins), Nobel Prize-winning scientist Ramakrishnan delves into the latest science of aging and investigates the nearly $30 billion dollar longevity industry to separate fact from fiction in our modern quest for immortality.

Listen to the episode below:

Read the transcript for this episode . Subscribe to Big Brains on Apple Podcasts and Spotify .

Source: University of Chicago

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