Century Lives
Episodes
Margaret Cho
17 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Look around you: Our communities are filled with people in their 60s, 70s, 80s, even 90s, doing things that would have been unthinkable at their age a...
Billy Collins
03 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Look around you: Our communities are filled with people in their 60s, 70s, 80s, even 90s, doing things that would have been unthinkable at their age a...
Diana Nyad
19 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Look around you: Our communities are filled with people in their 60s, 70s, 80s, even 90s, doing things that would have been unthinkable at their age a...
Nina Totenberg
17 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Look around you: Our communities are filled with people in their 60s, 70s, 80s, even 90s, doing things that would have been unthinkable at their age a...
Jacynth Bassett
22 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Look around you: Our communities are filled with people in their 60s, 70s, 80s, even 90s, doing things that would have been unthinkable at their age a...
Rick Steves
22 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Look around you: Our communities are filled with people in their 60s, 70s, 80s, even 90s, doing things that would have been unthinkable at their age a...
Fran Drescher
24 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Look around you: Our communities are filled with people in their 60s, 70s, 80s, even 90s, doing things that would have been unthinkable at their age a...
We Want to Hear from You!
11 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A future season of Century Lives will take a deep dive into the subject of housing. Our focus is inspired by a striking fact: The US is already facin...
FemTech
02 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sometimes a single question can open up a whole new world. About ten years ago, a young doctor named Sara Naseri was trying to think of how the field ...
The Mobius Strip
19 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Two of the biggest social factors that contribute to health problems are financial insecurity and caregiving for family members. And it’s no coincid...
When Life Gives You Lemons
05 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What are autoimmune diseases, exactly? And how many people have them? Experts can’t quite agree on the precise number, but it’s a lot: somewhere b...
Your Heart Is on Barbra Streisand’s Mind
19 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Everyone knows that heart disease is a men’s issue. But as it turns out, everyone is wrong. Heart disease is also the leading killer of women. And...
Menopause - Suck it Up
05 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
There are very few givens when it comes to menopause - and mostly unanswered questions. Should you treat menopause with hormones? Do hormones cause br...
Overlooked and Underfunded
22 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
During its first hundred years, the National Institutes of Health, the world’s premiere medical research institution, used only male subjects in its...
The Kids Give Me Life
09 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The United States has been described as the “most age-segregated society that’s ever been." In the final episode of Century Lives: The Century Clu...
Anti-ageism
02 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It may not come as a surprise, but fixating on someone’s age can affect how you think about them—and even how they think about themselves. And the...
Die Making Love
25 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It’s been said that you are what you eat, and Italians are aging like the fine wine that makes them famous. As older Italians retire and leave their...
Hurry, Hurry
18 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The national motto in South Korea is “hurry, hurry,” and that’s what the country did as it turned its metropolitan areas into “lifelong learni...
Retirement as a Career
11 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
You can’t go anywhere in Japan without running into older workers. They might be driving your taxi, serving your food, or selling you tickets at a t...
The Fountain of Youth
04 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Americans are obsessed with youth. But instead of keeping us younger, that focus is proving detrimental to our health. Join us as we explore how the U...
The Generational Shift
21 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Though attitudes about retirement are shifting rapidly, traditional notions of retirement still hold currency. In Episode 6, we meet Maria and Brendan...
I Will Never Retire
14 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For some, work is a calling, and they can’t ever imagine giving it up. In episode 5, we meet Michael Segal, and hear his incredible journey—begi...
My Next Act
07 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For some, retirement is just the starting pistol for that next act. Whether it is a new business or an entirely new career, retirement is just an out-...
The Classic
31 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Retire young: travel, spend time with family, perhaps tend to a nice piece of land in the country. It is the retirement that we all are supposed to wa...
The Struggle
24 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It’s a common story: approaching retirement with little or no savings, uncertain how far social security or savings will take you, dealing with clim...
Meet The Boss
17 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If there is a new vision of what “The New Retirement” should be, it is the “all of the above” retiree: stay healthy, stay involved in someth...
Alone Again—Unnaturally
13 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In episode 6, we explore an insidious epidemic, equivalent to the health effects of smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It can cause inflammation, heart dis...
Zombie Takis
06 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Obesity rates have exploded in the US over the past half-century, with negative consequences for healthy longevity. We travel to rural Arkansas, wher...
The Emerald Necklace
29 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Episode 4, we explore how the built environment—and trees—impact communities. Renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead designed Buff...
Heat is (Not) My Jam
15 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Episode 3 of Century Lives Season 4: A Lifetime of Inequality, we go to Phoenix, Arizona, to understand how it is that the built environment can ha...
It Takes a Village
08 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As it turns out, a person's lifelong health and longevity take root even before they are born. Preterm birth and low birth weight are connected with a...
New Mexico Could Not Hear the Train
01 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Episode 1 of Century Lives Season 4: A Lifetime of Inequality, we visit Albuquerque, New Mexico, to explore the impact of early childhood education...
Moving to Opportunity
26 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In our last two episodes of the season, we explore the challenges of concentrated urban poverty—and the depressive effects it has on health and life...
Birmingham, Alabama
12 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In our last two episodes of the season, we explore the challenges of concentrated urban poverty, and the depressive effects it has on health and life ...
Wayne County, Kentucky
29 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Do the ladies of the Quilt Guild, the short order cooks at the City Pool Hall, and “Pumpkin Joe” hold the secrets to longer life? In episode 4 of ...
Co-op City
15 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What could housing possibly have to do with life expectancy? Quite a bit, actually. In episode 3 of Century Lives: Place Matters, we travel to the Bro...
American Exceptionalism
01 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
If there's one thing we know about life expectancy in the US, it's that wealthy communities have long life expectancies and poorer communities have sh...
Presidio
15 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
If there's one thing we know about life expectancy in the US, it's that wealthy communities have long life expectancies and poor communities have shor...
Bashima Islam and the Battery Revolution
28 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Do you own a smart device? You know: an Android, an Alexa, an Apple Watch? If you do, you’re a part of the Internet of Things—and you’re going t...
Siddhartha Roy vs. the Hulk
14 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Episode 4, we meet water engineer and environmental justice advocate Siddhartha Roy. Now a research scientist at the University of North Carolina’...
Sophie Beren, Unifier
30 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Half of Generation Z—people who are now between 10 and 25 years old—could live to be 100. Their extended futures are shrouded by climate change, p...
Dr. Raven the Science Maven
16 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Half of Generation Z—people who are now between 10 and 25 years old—could live to be 100. Their extended futures are shrouded by climate change, p...
Justin Brezhnev: Hacker Cat
02 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Up to 50% of Gen Z—people who are now between 10 and 25 years old—could live to be 100. Their extended futures are shrouded by climate change, pan...
The Unretirement
15 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
People 55+ are reinventing life post-retirement, from its traditional image to a time for exploring second chapters and, especially, opportunities tha...
Work After 50
08 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
More than three-quarters of older workers experience ageism in the workplace, yet changing demographics and tight labor markets make this employee bas...
The 62% Solution
01 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Over 100 million Americans - 62% - pursue careers without having a college degree; for them, landing good-paying, stable jobs has become increasingly ...
The Free Agent Economy
25 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Gig-based work has exploded over the last decade, accounting for almost all of America’s job growth. Is it a more flexible, personalized work experi...
The 25-Job Career
18 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
With job tenures declining and job search technology booming, the traditional career ladder has vanished. How the new culture of job-hopping has crea...
Why We Work
11 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Why do Americans work so much - more than their counterparts in almost every other developed country - and with the pandemic sparking a national crisi...
Design Your Life
04 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What's the future of work if you're a college grad about to embark on a 60-year career? How to navigate the “big messy process” of charting a futu...
How They Work: Germany (Bonus Episode)
20 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the final installment of our four-episode bonus series, we head to Germany to get a glimpse of America’s demographic future. Germany is now one o...
How They Work: Singapore (Bonus Episode)
06 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The math is unavoidable: an aging country needs to attract, support, and retain aging workers. But burdened by workplace ageism and an inconsistent re...
How They Work: Finland (Bonus Episode)
23 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As the pandemic recedes, a battle is slowly brewing in American companies: bosses want their employees back in person, and workers are resisting a ret...
How They Work: Iceland (Bonus Episode)
09 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
2021 may be remembered as the year of the Great Resignation, when almost 48 million Americans left their jobs. The Great Resignation is not solely an ...
Work
16 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ever heard of a 3-stage life? Chances are you’ve been seeking to live it: education in the first quarter of your life, then work for 40 years, and f...
Higher Education
09 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
After WWII, four-year college education became democratized and over the years the four-year degree has increasingly become the defining educational r...
Healthcare and Tech
02 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Before COVID, virtually all medicine in this country was practiced face-to-face, but the pandemic has upended, at least temporarily, where and how we ...
Multigenerational Living
26 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In America, we’re taught to love our families, but not too much. For decades, we’ve held up the nuclear family as an idyllic model. But as we live...
Cities
19 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Why in some sections of Chicago does life expectancy easily exceed that of Japan, the longest lived country on earth, while just a few neighborhoods o...
New Map of Life
12 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Over the last century, life expectancy in the US has increased by 25 years, but many of our rules around work, learning, and retirement remain unchang...
Introducing: Century Lives
14 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Do rules created when most people lived only to 50 or 60 still make sense when more and more people live to 100? Longer lives are, at once, among the ...