Daniel Coyle

And at the time it was just men, uh, to come and take part in this experiment.

She ran one control group where it was just, you're just encouraged to remember what it was like to be young and enjoy your time in the house.

And then the second group was encouraged, your role is to live as if it was 20 years ago.

That was the instruction.

Your role is to live as if.

And one of them had a cane.

And it took a little time for this to get going.

And during this time, you can kind of picture their narrow task attention kind of broadening a little bit, connecting.

Oh, there's Perry Cuomo.

Oh, there's Johnny Unitas.

All these meaningful things that are connected in their lives.

And this group...

came to life.

There was much more conversation, much more energy, much more laughing.

They started to have little catchphrases, playful catchphrases among themselves.

And when it came time to pick them up,

one of the graduate students, one of Langer's graduate students had brought a football along and the old people grabbed the football and started playing touch football with it.

And as Ellen said, like at the start of the experiment, no one would have thought that was possible.

So where does that vitality, like we typically think of that as being, oh, those are great vibes or, oh, that's just magical.

Like what a cool little thing.