For what was originally going to be our 100th regular season episode, we wanted to turn the vaguely threatening title of our podcast on its head by exploring a topic that’s not about something that can kill you but rather the hows and whys of staying alive, forever. That’s right, this week we’re taking on the immense and amorphous concept of immortality, viewed primarily through the lens of biology. Why don’t humans or any other organisms live forever, evolutionarily speaking? What can the long search for an elixir of life tell us about our future prospects of life without end? How close has current technology brought us to achieving immortality in even the remotest sense of the word? This may not be your typical TPWKY episode, but we promise laughter, trivia, and existential contemplation about the meaning of life, so you’re not gonna want to miss it.
| History | Biology |
| Cave, Stephen. Immortality: The quest to live forever and how it drives civilization. Crown, 2012. | “Does the human lifespan have a limit: Nature Outlook:Aging 2022 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00070-1#ref-CR1 |
| Gollner, Adam. The book of immortality: the science, belief, and magic behind living forever. Simon and Schuster, 2013. | Dong, X., Milholland, B. and Vijg, J., 2016. Evidence for a limit to human lifespan. Nature, 538(7624), pp.257-259. |
| Shefferson, Richard P., Owen R. Jones, and Roberto Salguero-Gómez, eds. The evolution of senescence in the tree of life. Cambridge University Press, 2017. | López-Otín, C., Blasco, M.A., Partridge, L., Serrano, M. and Kroemer, G., 2013. The hallmarks of aging. Cell, 153(6), pp.1194-1217. |
| Bowles, J. T. “The evolution of aging: a new approach to an old problem of biology.” Medical hypotheses 51.3 (1998): 179-221. | Maklakov, A.A., Rowe, L. and Friberg, U., 2015. Why organisms age: Evolution of senescence under positive pleiotropy?. BioEssays, 37(7), pp.802-807. |
| Charlesworth, Brian. “Fisher, Medawar, Hamilton and the evolution of aging.” Genetics 156.3 (2000): 927-931. | Gollner, A., 2013. The book of immortality: the science, belief, and magic behind living forever. Simon and Schuster. |
| Gaillard, Jean‐Michel, and Jean‐François Lemaître. “The Williams’ legacy: A critical reappraisal of his nine predictions about the evolution of senescence.” Evolution 71.12 (2017): 2768-2785. | Guarente, L. and Kenyon, C., 2000. Genetic pathways that regulate ageing in model organisms. Nature, 408(6809), pp.255-262. |
| Giaimo, Stefano, and Arne Traulsen. “The selection force weakens with age because ageing evolves and not vice versa.” Nature communications 13.1 (2022): 1-7. | Lithgow, G.J. and Kirkwood, T.B., 1996. Mechanisms and evolution of aging. Science, 273(5271), pp.80-80. |
| Hamilton, William D. “The moulding of senescence by natural selection.” Journal of theoretical biology 12.1 (1966): 12-45. | Garmany, A., Yamada, S. and Terzic, A., 2021. Longevity leap: Mind the healthspan gap. NPJ Regenerative Medicine, 6(1), pp.1-7. |
| Kirkwood, Thomas BL, and Michael R. Rose. “Evolution of senescence: late survival sacrificed for reproduction.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences 332.1262 (1991): 15-24. | Fontana, L., Kennedy, B.K., Longo, V.D., Seals, D. and Melov, S., 2014. Medical research: treat ageing. Nature, 511(7510), pp.405-407. |
| Kyriazis, Marios. “Ageing throughout history: the evolution of human lifespan.” Journal of molecular evolution 88.1 (2020): 57-65. | DeVito, L.M., Barzilai, N., Cuervo, A.M., Niedernhofer, L.J., Milman, S., Levine, M., Promislow, D., Ferrucci, L., Kuchel, G.A., Mannick, J. and Justice, J., 2022. Extending human healthspan and longevity: a symposium report. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1507(1), pp.70-83. |
| Lithgow, Gordon J., and Thomas BL Kirkwood. “Mechanisms and evolution of aging.” Science 273.5271 (1996): 80-80. | Michael Levin, “The electrical blueprints that orchestrate life” https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_levin_the_electrical_blueprints_that_orchestrate_life?language=en |
| Ricklefs, Robert E. “The evolution of senescence from a comparative perspective.” Functional Ecology (2008): 379-392. | |
| Rose, Michael R., and Laurence D. Mueller. “Ageing and immortality.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences 355.1403 (2000): 1657-1662. | |
| Rose, Michael R., et al. “Hamilton’s forces of natural selection after forty years.” Evolution: International Journal of Organic Evolution 61.6 (2007): 1265-1276. | |
| Williams, GC. “Pleiotrophy, natural selection and the evolution of senescence.” Evolution 11 (1957): 393-411. |
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