Derek Thompson

How did you become interested in them and what distinguishes them?

I want to roll back on one thing you said before we talk more deeply about super-agers.

You said that as you look at people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, median memory scores decline linearly, but the standard deviation grows.

So the distribution of memory among people in their 80s is much wider than the distribution of memory among people in their 20s.

What surprises me about this is

is that you find that memory declines linearly.

I think I would have assumed the opposite, that memory might slowly drop off in one's 20s and 30s.

And then maybe in our 70s and 80s, there's like a sudden acceleration downward.

But I can see you're shaking your head.

No, that's not what you found.

That's really interesting.

Yeah, this would explain why my wife has pointed out that at 39, I seem to have much worse memory than I did at 29.

You got it.

We have a child.

We have a home.

We have complicated jobs.

This is actually wonderful.

I now realize that I have a biomedical excuse that I can give to my wife every time she tells me I'm terrible at logistics.

It's not my memory so much that's slipping, although it might be slipping a little bit.

It's that my life is much more complex.