Derek Thompson

And then also, could you slow down and distinguish between what one might call normal memory loss and what is diagnosed as dementia or Alzheimer's?

And when we're defining dementia and Alzheimer's, what are we talking about here?

You spent decades studying a phenomenon you call super aging.

You've talked a little bit about how there's this wide distribution and cognitive abilities among people over 65, right?

Some people are at the lower end.

They might be diagnosed with Alzheimer's and some are at the higher end, right?

These, I presume, are the super agers.

And to be clear to listeners, this is not about who stays alive the longest, right?

They might think of super agers as someone who lives to like 120 years old.

That's not what we're talking about here.

We're talking about people-

Absolutely not.

When they're 85, have the mind of a 55-year-old.

Tell me about these folks, super-agers.

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.