Charlotte Wood

I hope he's not listening because I'm sure that's wrong, but he's interested in how animals regulate their own nutrition.

And he said, well, animal aging is much more accelerated than human aging.

So if you're looking at human aging, maybe you should look at animal aging as well.

And I thought, wow, that's interesting.

I don't know what to do with that.

Then, at the same time, my friend Prue's very old dog, Finn, was dementing, you know, basically falling apart in every way, and she had to make the decision to put him down.

Put her down, sorry, the real Finn was a girl.

My Finn is a boy.

And so then I could bring those two things together and then it became incredibly useful to, narratively, you know, to have this dog as the interrupter and the tension causer and all kinds of stuff.

So it was kind of a non...

science-y way of using what I was given by this place.

And it was sort of tricky for me to be there because I thought I can't... And I had a whole lot of really interesting conversations and amazing, fantastic seminars and everything, but I knew that I couldn't...

take the science into my book in a sciencey way because they would have just killed it.

For me, I couldn't write a book that said, and the incidence of cardiovascular disease in Australia, Jude thought, was, you know.

So I couldn't, and I was quite anxious about that.

But because they are so trusting,

And they just kept saying, just do what you want.

We're not going to ask you any questions.

You take what you take and we are getting a lot out of you being here.

And I'm thinking, I don't know what you're getting out of me being here.