Marnie Chesterton

In Wales, the country where this show is recorded, in 2004 only 15 out of 100,000 people made it to their 100th birthday. By 2024 that had almost doubled, 26 centenarians per 100,000 people.

Sääntöjä sanovat, että tämä voidaan kertoa parhailla eläimellisyydellä, parhailla koulutuksella ja yleisellä parhailla ympäristöllisellä terveydellä. Tietysti, jos haluat tuntea hyvältä ajasta, jolla elämme nyt, miksi ei oteta heti ymmärtämään niitä parhailla eläimellisyydellä? Parhailla tavoitteilla tutkia syötä, parhailla tutkimuksia. Meillä on vaksinoita, jotka pysyvät miljoonaan tekemään TB, meesolit, polio, flu ja, kiitos, antibiootit.

We've also learned about the foods that spike your cholesterol and that smoking kills. There are, of course, always outliers. My great aunt, for instance, smoked for most of her first century, and her 100th birthday card was a picture of her holding up a packet of cigarettes with the warning on it that smokers die younger. I'd like to think she would have made it to 200 as a non-smoker.

I'm Marni Chesterton from the BBC World Service. This is Unexpected Elements.

And to get this literal party started, more on that later, I have what every party needs, a couple of reliably brilliant science journalists. In Mumbai, India, we have Chavi Sachdev. Hello, Chavi. Hello, Kolata. And in Helsinki, Finland, Tristan Ahton.

Hande ande babon, terve and hello. So this is Unexpected Elements. It's the science program inspired by the news. And for any new listeners out there, what we do is we take a headline. We use that as a springboard to jump off into loads of intriguing science stories. You can expect expert interviews. We've got listeners questions, a bit of archive audio, and hopefully we'll learn something along the way.

Now I've mentioned centenarians and here in the UK there is one birthday celebration you cannot escape this week, especially if you consume any BBC content. But hopefully it should resonate with listeners around the globe. Take a listen to this.

The 8th of May is a significant day. Monumental occasion. TV legend turns 100. Sir David Attenborough. Born in London 1926. He's been doing this since the 50s.

Yes, wildlife broadcaster Sir David Attenborough is turning 100 years old this week.

This is a man who brought us 70 years of groundbreaking television, and I'm not just talking about the stunning natural history programs. Sir David was also in charge of programming at a point where he could put the iconic comedy Monty Pythons Flying Circus on air.

And I think as we talked about before in this show, he's also responsible for giving the UK its first color TV programming. But mainly this is a man who has brought us the secrets and extraordinary lives of the other species that share this planet. So let's use this show to throw him some sort of 100th birthday. Hurray! Does anybody know how David Attenborough has managed to live to be 100 years old?

Okay, proteins we might know from our diet as the stuff that we get from fish and meat and eggs and beans. They're also, when they're in the body, the type of molecule that does all sorts of things from building tissues to making hormones and enzymes that regulate our metabolism.

Now, the usual cliche is my body is a temple, but I'm really drawn to this idea that we need to think of our body as some sort of car. Because I've previously made a doc about obesity, and someone had a really nice car analogy for the stresses it puts on you. And they said it's like you've got a roof rack that's overloaded, and your car's going to be fine at first, but it actually puts a lot of extra stress on the axles and things. No, I could see that. What car are we all being?

I'm definitely some sort of a second-hand car. I need to go to the body shop. I want spares. Are we the car that we want to be or the car that we actually are? I mean, this is radio, so I can be an Aston Martin. No one's going to see that I'm actually a VW camper van, so it's fine. Back to the study, the Swiss 100 study. What did they find and where do the proteins come into this?

Ihmiset ovat todella yllättyneitä kestävyyteenä tällä hetkellä. Olin katsomassa artikkelia siitä, miten ihmiset, jotka elävät terveellisesti, kun he ovat vanhempia, ovat eläneet terveellisesti koko elämänsä. Onko sinulla ymmärryksiä, mikä eläimi voisi auttaa meidät elämään pidemmäksi?

He elävät pitkän aikaa. He todellakin elävät pitkän aikaa. Marni? Kyllä, mutta se voisi auttaa meidät elämään pitkän aikaa. Minä menen häneltä, koska ihmiset, joilla on hänet, pitkään pitkään pitkään pitkään pitkään pitkään pitkään pitkään pitkään pitkään pitkään pitkään pitkään pitkään pitkään.

No. I can't say that I have. All right. Well, let me introduce you to it. So its Latin name is Turritopsis dornii. It's rather tiny. It's about the size of your pinky fingernail. It's really quite lovely. And the deal is they don't die. Wow. Instead, adult jellyfish can return to their juvenile state if they get stressed out.

Voitko ajatella, jos ihmisen vastaus stressiin olisi tullut 9-vuotias? Mutta nämä jäliä, he jäävät. Tämä tarkoittaa, että he eivät oikeastaan koskaan muuta muuta muuta? He voivat muuta muuta, mutta he eivät muuta vanhoista.

First let me zoom out though and explain the life cycle of a jellyfish in general. Jellyfish have a pretty complex life cycle and it includes both asexual stage and an asexual stage. And in the adult, which is the sexual stage, the body is called Medusa and it produces gametes, which are the egg in the sperm. And the eggs, which are fertilized by the sperm, develop into gametes.

jota kutsutaan planulaan, joka on sellaista larvalta. Ja nämä loppuvat loppuun maanpäin, liittyvät rauhalle tai maan puolelle, ja sitten kehittyvät poliipiin. Ja poliipit käsittelevät aseksiaalisesti syrjäämättömiä medusaita, jotka myöhemmin kehittyvät vanhempien medusaitoihin.