Derek Thompson

Hanging out with friends strengthens the part of our brains that are responsible for memory retention as we age.

This is not the first paper to suggest that friendships and relationships are the key to healthy aging.

Several years ago, in one of my favorite episodes, Robert Waldinger and Mark Scholes of the longitudinal Harvard study of happiness said the key to a long, happy life was relationships.

I think some people resist findings like these.

They think they're touchy-feely.

They want the elixir of life to exist in a pill or an injectable to be described at the level of precise molecular description and mechanism.

But to me, it makes perfect sense that social fitness would help the social animal as it ages.

As listeners and readers know, one of the themes I'm most interested in are the ironic ways that modern life conspires to pull us away from each other in this antisocial century.

And I am always on the lookout for people and scientists and ideas that explain how we should think more deliberately about socializing as a part of healthy living.

Today's guest is Sandra Weintraub.

And we talk about her research, the science of super aging, the science of memory and the brain, and why she thinks maybe we should begin to talk about friends and relationships as being a matter of brain health itself.

I'm Derek Thompson.

This is Plain English.

Dr. Weintraub, welcome to the show.

Your research spans memory, aging, Alzheimer's, dementia.

What got you into this space?

Let me just stop you right there before you finish your story.

I would love to make sure that we retrace some of the vocabulary here.

Tell me what aphasia is.

Sure.