ShortHand: How To Live to 100
episodePreviously titled “ShortHand: How Can You Live to 100?” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 4, 2026
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What is the main question about living to 100?
Kyllä, se on lempeä kesä nyt, kun elämänmaku on kaikista makein. Mieli kuin nuorena tyttönä kaurapellolla, kun saa liihottaa. Nauti vaan ja ota väli pala välissä.
Ai, ai, ai, ai, niin se on. Eloveena. Täyttä eloa. Hey, honey. Are you at Prisma? I'm here. Good. What's the matter this time? Nothing. Well, what's the matter? I'm at Prisma.fi and I'm just ordering new B-flats, rear engines and a tow truck. If you'd like, I'll bring them to you. If you'd like, I'll order them at the same time. Shall we? Well, good. Yes. Everything you need for the summer at Prisma and Prisma.fi online shop.
In all the complexities of the universe, there is one thing we know for certain about life, and that's that it ends. That's right, we are all going to die one day, and we might not know how, we might not know when, but like it or not, the big fella with the black hood will eventually come a-knocking for us all. But is there a way to delay the inevitable swing of his scythe? Well, some people reckon that they might have found the cheat codes to longevity, and they might not be quite what you'd expect. Want to learn the secrets to sticking around for a good time and a long time? This is The Shorthand.
Much of modern research into life expectancy traces back to one guy, 19th century English mathematician Benjamin Gompertz. In 1825, he created the Gompertz law that provides mathematical proof for what we might call, stating the obvious, human mortality rates increase exponentially with age. The Gompertz model says that for adults between 30 and 90, your risk of dying roughly doubles every seven to eight years. But surely things have changed since then, right? Yes and no. Thanks to advancements in healthcare and technology, people are now expected to live a hell of a lot longer than they were back when Mr Gompertz was knocking about. Back in the 1800s, no country had a life expectancy higher than 40, thanks to dire infant mortality rates, mainly with 15% of all UK babies dying before the age of one.
Nowadays, the average global expectancy is over 70. But these changes haven't kept the grim reaper completely at bay. While you might be less likely to pop your clogs as a tot, age-related diseases like diabetes and cancer have also become increasingly common as we live longer. Even with medical intervention, the body's biological ability to fight back and recover from these illnesses naturally decreases as you age. So as a rule, Gompertz's law continues to hold up today and is still widely used by life insurance companies to figure out how much you might need to cough up for your premiums.
Which brings us to our next big question. Is there a biological limit to how long humans can actually live? Science generally says that yes, there is. Many biologists believe that the absolute maximum age a human can reach is somewhere between 115 and 125 years. Beyond this point, your organs would just lose any ability to recover from illness and stress, known as resilience, and just shut down. How do they know this for sure? Well, it's simple as far as we know. No one has ever done it. Data shows that the oldest people tend to start dropping like flies around the 115-year mark. And nobody's ever made it to 125. The oldest male in verified history was Jimryon Kimura from Japan who passed away in 2013 at the ripe old age of 116 years and 54 days.
And the longest ever verified human life belonged to a French lady named Jeanne Calment. who made it to an impressive 122 years and 164 days old in 1997. She attributed her longevity to chocolate, after-dinner cigarettes, olive oil, and just to mix it up a little bit, daily fruit salads. But we're going to come back to Jean's story in a little bit because there might be a little bit more there that meets the eye.
Enough looking into the past. What about the future? Well, not everyone agrees on how long our flesh sacks could hypothetically keep going. Global researchers have recently used a computer model to suggest the actual upper ceiling of a human being could be 150 years, based on studies into resilience and recovery in the body.
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