For over a century, we’ve been in the midst of a revolution in longevity – one that is unprecedented in human history. More than a quarter century has been added to the average lifespan since the 1900s. How should individuals and society make the most of this time? How can we rethink education, careers, healthcare, and retirement in light of our longer lives? In the season finale of The World As You’ll Know It: The Future of Aging, we speak with psychologist Laura Carstensen and economist Andrew...
Jul 01, 2025•34 min
The world today is oversaturated with trends, tips, and treatments for how to live long and be healthy while doing it. But it can be hard to know who to listen to – and what actually works. In this episode, we talk to Dr. Eric Topol, renowned cardiologist and author of the book Super Agers: An Evidenced-Based Approach to Longevity, to clear up some of the myths around healthy aging and shine light on what actually works. We cover everything from how much sleep you need and how much movement to g...
Jun 24, 2025•33 min
Women tend to live longer than men, even under the most difficult conditions like famines and epidemics. While it’s true that women tend to go to the doctor more and engage in less risk-prone activities, behavior alone doesn’t explain this phenomenon. In this episode, demographer Virginia Zarulli tells us about the implications of the startling fact that, in times of extreme hardship, it is often infant girls outliving infant boys that contributes most to the gap in longevity. Neurologist Dena D...
Jun 17, 2025•34 min
We’ve known about Alzheimer’s and its devastating effects for more than 100 years, and have been predicting an imminent cure for at least the last 25. So why is it that after so many years of research and unrelenting loss, we’re not further along in our progress towards a cure? In this episode we consult three experts who have dedicated much of their lives to understanding this question. Neurobiologist Karl Herrup is the author of “How Not To Study a Disease: The Story of Alzheimer’s.” Charles P...
Jun 10, 2025•36 min
A forgotten name, misplaced keys, feeling overwhelmed by some new technology. Classic signs of a brain beginning its long, inexorable descent into old age? Not necessarily. In fact, new research shows that we can preserve and even enhance our cognitive skills as we get older. In this episode, we explore the science behind the aging brain with psychologist and lifelong learner Dr. Rachel Wu, who has made remarkable breakthroughs in understanding how older brains acquire new skills and knowledge. ...
Jun 03, 2025•31 min
Blood transfusions, cryotherapy, experimental drugs and intermittent fasting are just a few of the measures so-called biohackers are taking in hopes of radically extending their lifespans. But what started as a faddish subculture has boomed into a multi-billion dollar industry – encompassing both shady claims and reputable scientific research. In this episode, we unpack the science and the hype behind some of the most prominent biohacking tools being used today, including caloric restriction, Ra...
May 27, 2025•36 min
In 2000, two scientists — Steve Austed, a biologist and Jay Olshanksy, a biostatistician — made a bet. Would a person live to the age of 150 by the year 2150? Austad bet yes and Olshansky bet no. The wager? $150, which will grow to more than one billion by the time it’s settled. In this episode, we revisit this twenty-five year old bet to find both men sticking to their guns. We also speak to Nobel Prize winner, Venki Ramakrishnan, about new insights into what causes us to age. The episode explo...
May 20, 2025•35 min
Human beings are living longer than ever. Thanks to advances like vaccines, antibiotics, pasteurized milk and clean water, we’ve added more than 30 years to the average lifespan over the last 120 years. That’s more than was added in the previous 10,000 years combined. More recently, enormous progress has been made in our treatment of deadly conditions like heart disease and cancer, with mortality rates for each dropping by double digits. Now science is tackling a new challenge: Can we cure aging...
May 19, 2025•3 min
The Paris Climate Agreement says we need to reach “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050. That means for every new carbon molecule we put in the air, we have to take one out. Even the most optimistic forecasts still anticipate burning fossil fuels well past that date. So how do we balance the carbon books? Enter direct air capture, or DAC — a mechanical process that sucks carbon out of the atmosphere — which many believe will be crucial to controlling climate change. Right now the technology is ext...
Aug 13, 2024•26 min•Season 5Ep. 3
Hydrogen has long been the great hope of the environmental movement. Hydrogen-powered cars; airplanes; even home heating. A single molecule could power it all. Much of that has gone nowhere. But now, hydrogen is being touted as the answer to carbon-free steel. Can we trust in our hydrogen future this time? To explore that question, host Arielle Duhaime-Ross talks to Rachael Fahkry, policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Jason Mortimer, from the company Electric Hydrogen. T...
Aug 06, 2024•22 min•Season 5Ep. 5
Heat kills more people in the United States than any other weather event, and scientists expect the earth to continue to get hotter. Unfortunately, one of the most effective tools we have to combat heat — air-conditioning — also contributes to global warming. The hotter we get, the more AC we’ll need: It’s a conundrum. So how do we keep cool without making the planet hotter at the same time? Host Arielle Duhaime-Ross speaks to Dr. David Hondula, the Director of Heat Response and Mitigation for t...
Jul 30, 2024•26 min•Season 5Ep. 4
The United States was once on track to be a world leader in nuclear power, building more than 100 plants in the 1970s and 1980s. But cost and safety concerns led to decades of decommissioning old plants and canceling plans to build new ones. Now, with clean energy production a top priority, there are signs of a revival. Reactors at the first new nuclear plant to be built in almost 30 years went online last year, and the Biden administration wants to triple the country’s nuclear capacity. Host Ar...
Jul 23, 2024•32 min•Season 5Ep. 3
Americans drive more, drive further, and pay less for fuel than people in other developed countries. Partly for this reason, our vehicles are more than just a means of transportation — they’re extensions of who we are. So persuading Americans to swap out gas-dependent cars for EVs is a different — and in many ways more difficult — challenge. What’s it going to take to get more Americans into electric vehicles? Host Arielle Duhaime-Ross explores the obstacles and possible solutions to EV adoption...
Jul 16, 2024•30 min•Season 5Ep. 2
In the past 50 years, solar energy has surpassed all expectations. Even early solar experts couldn’t predict how affordable and widespread it would become. The story behind its success involves Einstein, US presidents, obscure legislation and a global relay race. Now the question is – What can the rise of solar power teach us about the future of other climate technologies? Join this season’s host, Arielle Duhaime-Ross, in conversations with Greg Nemet, author of “How Solar Became Cheap,” and Nat...
Jul 09, 2024•27 min•Season 5Ep. 1
We’re currently involved in one of the most ambitious projects we, as humans, have ever attempted: Rebuilding the world, pretty much from the ground up, in order to switch from fossil fuels to clean energy sources. In this season of The World as You'll Know It, science journalist Arielle Duhaime-Ross goes deep inside the world of cutting-edge climate technologies and asks: How is this going to work? The answers — from some of the world’s most innovative and audacious thinkers, builders and inves...
Jun 25, 2024•2 min
In our final episode, Host Gary Marcus shares his hopes for and fears about an AI-driven future. On the one hand, AI could accelerate solutions to some of society’s most difficult problems; on the other, it could deepen existing problems and create new existential risks to humanity. Getting it right, Marcus emphasizes, depends on establishing both national and international standards for the industry as soon as possible. He is joined by Dr. Alondra Nelson, who led the White House Office of Scien...
Aug 29, 2023•30 min•Season 4Ep. 8
Some people use chatbots for therapy. Others have fallen in love with them. And some people argue that AI systems have become sentient and are entitled to certain rights. In this episode, Gary Marcus explores our relationship with AI technology — how it’s changing and where it might lead. He speaks with Blake Lemoine, an engineer who believes that a Google program has achieved sentience and even has feelings, Eugenia Kuyda, the founder and CEO of Replika, Anna Oakes, a lead producer and co-host ...
Aug 22, 2023•34 min•Season 4Ep. 7
The emergence of generative AI threatens to automate millions of jobs, potentially ushering in a new and unprecedented wave of job displacement. In the past, newly created jobs replaced those lost. Will that happen this time? To discuss this, Gary Marcus is joined by Amy Winter, a concept artist who sees generative AI as a threat to her career, Brian Merchant, the technology columnist for the Los Angeles Times and author of “Blood in the Machine: the Origins of the Rebellion against Big Tech”, a...
Aug 15, 2023•29 min•Season 4Ep. 6
Misinformation has already influenced our elections, ruined reputations and fundamentally changed society’s relationship with the truth. Now, large language models like GPT have the potential to create and spread misinformation at a speed and scale we’ve never seen before. As new technologies allow bad actors to imitate the way we write, the way we speak and the way we appear in photos and videos, the question won’t be, ‘What we can believe in?’ but whether we’ll be able to believe in anything a...
Aug 08, 2023•27 min•Season 4Ep. 5
New large language models are capable of writing essays, drafting marketing pitches and having human-like exchanges on chat apps. But can they make us laugh the way a human can? To explore this, host Gary Marcus is joined by Dr. Naomi Saphra, an AI researcher and comedian, Bob Mankoff, former Cartoon Editor of The New Yorker magazine and Yejin Choi, a computer science professor at the University of Washington and 2022 MacArthur Fellow. While artificial intelligence systems can generate far more ...
May 16, 2023•28 min•Season 4Ep. 4
We've been promised wide-scale driverless cars for more than a decade, but a true driverless experience still remains out of reach. It turns out that taking humans out of the loop is putting everyone on the road at risk. Host Gary Marcus talks to Cade Metz, a tech reporter for The New York Times and Dr. Missy Cummings, former senior safety advisor to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, to explore requirements that would make self-driving cars reliable and secure for everyone. To ...
May 09, 2023•33 min•Season 4Ep. 3
After its victory on Jeopardy, IBM made a billion-dollar bet on Watson: cancer. But it turned out that diagnosing patients isn’t the same as answering questions on a game show. Gary Marcus talks to journalists, doctors and computer scientists to find out how and why IBM’s experiment failed to live up to expectations, then looks at a new AI project that is showing promise at treating one of the world’s leading causes of hospital death. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices v...
May 02, 2023•37 min•Season 4Ep. 2
In 2011, Watson, a computer built by IBM, shocked the world by becoming the first non-human contestant to win Jeopardy. An immediate sensation, Watson became the symbol of the seemingly limitless horizons of artificial intelligence. Host Gary Marcus retells this amazing story with the help of Dave Ferrucci, the genius behind Watson’s success, and Ken Jennings, the all-time Jeopardy champion and the inspiration behind IBM’s project. A transcript of their conversation can be found at Aventine.org/...
Apr 25, 2023•31 min•Season 4Ep. 1
From the producers of The World as You’ll Know It, a new series about the perils and promise of artificial intelligence with cognitive scientist, Gary Marcus. For all the progress in artificial intelligence over the last 70 years — computers can now beat people at chess and Go, detect fraud, give driving instructions and write like Shakespeare — we still don’t know how to build AI we can trust. The risks are serious, but the potential benefits of AI are too great to be ignored. In this special e...
Mar 07, 2023•4 min
Judith Warner speaks with Dr. Matthew Johnson about the state of psychedelic research today and the likelihood that certain drugs — MDMA and psilocybin specifically — could soon be approved for the treatment of conditions like addiction and PTSD. Psychedelics have long been known for their abilities to alter perception, but renewed interest by major research institutions in psychedelics’ ability to treat a range of common disorders has brought some of them to the precipice of FDA approval. DR. J...
Sep 13, 2022•28 min•Season 3Ep. 5
One out of five Americans suffer from chronic pain and a new approach to treatment could transform their lives. Judith Warner speaks with Drs. Yoni Ashar and Tor Wager, neuroscientists who are at the forefront of a new way to understand and treat chronic pain that looks to the brain rather than the body as pain’s source. The treatment is relatively new, but growing rapidly in acceptance, thanks in part to a groundbreaking study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association earlier...
Sep 06, 2022•38 min•Season 3Ep. 4
Judith Warner speaks with Dr. Thomas Insel, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, about the failures in mental healthcare and how technology could be an important tool in addressing them. DR. THOMAS INSEL was the head of the National Institute of Mental Health from 2002 to 2015, during which time he grew concerned about the lack of improvement in mental health outcomes despite great leaps forward in technology and brain science. He left for Silicon Valley, where, most recently, he founded Vanna Hea...
Aug 30, 2022•25 min•Season 3Ep. 3
Judith Warner speaks with Dr. Rudolph Tanzi, a neurologist and professor at Harvard University, about the possible causes of and coming treatments for Alzheimer’s Disease. One of the most complex and mysterious diseases ever known, Alzheimer’s has been the focus of Dr. Tanzi’s professional life for forty years; in 1987 he co-discovered the first gene that causes early onset Alzheimer's as a graduate student. DR. RUDOLPH TANZIi is the Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvar...
Aug 23, 2022•26 min•Season 3Ep. 2
Judith Warner speaks with Dr. John Donoghue about recent advancements in brain computer interface, or BCI, a technology that allows paralyzed people to move and communicate through the power of their thoughts. DR. JOHN DONOGHUE, the H.M. Wriston Professor of Neuroscience and Engineering at Brown University, has been a pioneer in the field of BCI research for over four decades, contributing to many of the breakthroughs that have made today’s progress possible. A transcript of their conversation c...
Aug 16, 2022•31 min•Season 3Ep. 1
The last decade has seen astonishing advancements in brain science that have opened doors to new ways of treating trauma, depression, and pain. Each week, host Judith Warner talks to leading brain experts about how their research is making possible the kinds of things that, just a few years ago, might have seemed like science fiction. The World as You'll Know It returns for a third season on August 16. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/p...
Aug 16, 2022•3 min
