Today we explore a potential scientific fountain of youth, how cooperation among strangers has, contrary to popular belief, actually increased in recent years, and how the pandemic has caused the perception of time distortion.
Today we explore a potential scientific fountain of youth, how cooperation among strangers has, contrary to popular belief, actually increased in recent years, and how the pandemic has caused the perception of time distortion.
Reverse Aging
Cooperation Increase
Time & Covid
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to get smarter with Calli and Nate — for free! Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Find episode transcripts: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/reverse-aging-cooperation-increase-time-covid
[SFX: INTRO MUSIC/WHOOSH]
NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back!
NATE: Today we are gonna learn about a possible scientific fountain of youth, how cooperation among strangers has, contrary to popular belief, actually increased in recent years, and how the pandemic has caused the perception of time distortion.
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Nate, if you had to guess a scientific method to reverse the aging process, what would you choose?
NATE: Hmmmm… a scientific fountain of youth. I’m not sure what I’d guess, maybe an injection of some kind?
CALLI: Not quite. Researchers in Israel have found a way to potentially reverse or slow down the body’s aging through, get this, oxygen therapy.
NATE: No way! So the fountain of youth is more like a… hyperbaric chamber of youth.
CALLI: Exactly! The study focuses on a part of our chromosomes called telomeres that are related to how we age. Researchers want to use the oxygen therapy and hyperbaric chambers to reverse the aging process within these telomeres in the hopes to discover whether or not we can slow it down.
NATE: Can’t relate, Calli. I’ll never get old, and I’ll never die. But what did this study have to say?
CALLI: Well, it’s no secret that humans have a finite lifespan because of how our DNA works. But, if we were to pinpoint the exact way our DNA changes as we get older, we can potentially reverse the damage done over time. So, we know that the research revolves around Telomeres, which are found on the end of our chromosomes, and are somehow longer when we’re born and shorter when we die. They’re a protective feature of our genes and, when they shorten, DNA damage can occur and our bodies, as a result, begin to break down. AKA: Death.
NATE: Very grim. So… did they find a way to stop aging?
CALLI: Check it out: they decided to see if oxygen could be used to reverse and revitalize the DNA, which would basically rewind time by lengthening the telomeres and increasing its defenses. So they held a trial for three months where volunteers that were over 64 years old sat in a hyperbaric chamber and were asked to breathe through a mask. This mask provided them oxygen, with each participant in the chamber for 90 minutes, five days a week. After the trial period was over, the researchers examined the participants’ DNA and found something crazy.
NATE: I’m expecting to hear something crazy, Calli.
CALLI: They found that the telomeres of each individual were “young” again. Longer, stronger, more similar to that of somebody in their mid-20s. Remember, these are 64 year old people at the LEAST.
NATE: Oh my goodness.
CALLI: Indeed. What’s more is that this kind of oxygen therapy can actually be combined with other types of anti-aging therapy to boost longevity in animal life, including humans.
NATE: That would basically reverse aging in a literal sense?
CALLI: Maybe! You see, it hasn’t been measured precisely yet, this idea of using multiple therapies. Because while the DNA of the study participants shows concrete benefits on a microscopic level, it’s unclear how those changes actually translate in regards to lifespan.
NATE: So you mean, it’s not actually clear if it makes people live longer?
CALLI: Exactly. And furthermore, how much longer would it make somebody stay alive for? Are there any drawbacks? We don’t know yet. And until those questions are answered, nobody can make a claim that they’ve found a way to extend human life. Well, except in the most tried and true method, of course.
NATE: And that method is making a deal with the devil, right?
CALLI: Close - it’s good old fashioned exercise and dieting, Nate. It’s making a deal with a HEALTHY LIVING devil!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Calli, do you ever hear people talking about the good ol’ days?
CALLI: Oh sure, that rose-colored glasses time when the people were nicer, and you could always count on your neighbor for a cup of sugar? I feel like my aunts and uncles are always going on and on about that.
NATE: Well what if I told you that new analysis shows that we, right now, are living in the good ol’ days. A new study has found that cooperation in the US between strangers has been steadily rising since the 1950s! We are more cooperative with strangers than at any point in the last 60+ years!
CALLI: I have to say, with the way everyone talks, that result really surprises me!
NATE: Same here! They say part of that surprise comes from the fact that many in the US believe society is less connected, trusting, and committed to the common good. But when you look at the results, that's just not the case.
CALLI: What results did they look at? How do they have good data from all the way back in the 1950s?
NATE: Well researchers did a meta-analysis, so they basically looked at a bunch of other studies to draw conclusions. They looked at 511 studies from 1956 to 2017, which altogether had more than 63,000 participants. They measured cooperation among strangers through self-reports and lab experiments, and when they looked at this data, they found a small gradual increase in cooperation all the way across the 61-year span.
CALLI: That is so encouraging, I feel like it just goes against all the bad news I’ve been hearing about how society is developing!
NATE: It contradicts a lot of literature that’s suggested we don’t cooperate as much anymore, and that is just not true!
CALLI: Do we know what’s causing the trend?
NATE: Well, there are a few explanations, but many of them are correlations more than causations. Competitive markets and economic growth actually increase cooperation, but apparently, increased urbanization, which has more people living in cities, might be part of the shift, too. As more of us live in cities, we have to cooperate and rely on more than just our friends and acquaintances. In an anonymous society like a city, you have to work with the people you bump into all day long.
CALLI: We are all in this together. Which actually makes me think too, does it matter if you live by yourself or with others?
NATE: Americans generally have high levels of individualism when you consider all the people that live alone, the elevated divorce rate, and that many of us are self-employed. More individualism means more trust in general because when we feel more alone, we seem to reach out for a sense of community!
CALLI: So where do we go from here?
NATE: So, the study took place mostly with participants who were in college, so we have to do more work to see if it reflects society as a whole. But overall, this is a very positive thing! With more cooperation, we may be more willing to work together to tackle the big challenges we are sure to face like climate change and future disasters, like pandemics.
CALLI: Well, thanks for teaching me about cooperation.
NATE: Thank YOU for thanking me. Looks like we’re heading in the right direction!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Nate, have you felt in the last two years like your sense of time was warped at all?
NATE: Oh absolutely, it has been so weird. Some days feel like they fly by, while other hours just drag on!
CALLI: You're not alone! A new study shows that the COVID-19 pandemic alterend how many, perhaps even the majority of Americans, experienced the passage of time. Some had trouble tracking the change of days and weeks, while others felt hours slow down and speed up.
NATE: Oh that is so interesting, is this a new experience or is this something researchers have seen before?
CALLI: Well that altered perception of time is known as “Temporal Disintegration.” Researchers have seen it before and say it is linked with persistent negative mental outcomes, things like the depression and anxiety that often follow trauma.
NATE: I have to say I’m surprised that just a sense of time can have such a big impact on our mental and emotional well being.
CALLI: Apparently having a strong sense of the passage of time, with continuity between the past, present and future is crucial for your well-being. Disrupting that string of time can bring a slew of mental health challenges.
NATE: But how do we know that so many Americans were experiencing this?
CALLI: A study took a nationally representative sample of 5,661 American participants, all of whom had completed mental and physical health surveys prior to the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, so researchers had an accurate baseline. The researchers conducted assessments of these participants from March to April 2020, and then from September to October 2020 and asked about their experiences with distorted time perception.
NATE: Well what did they find?
CALLI: For one, that we had experienced a collective extended trauma. This was the first study to show the prevalence and predictors of time distortion because many of the respondents had it. Scientists were even able to identify common pandemic-related stressors that could predict perceived time distortion.
NATE: What kind of things were likely to cause the distortions?
CALLI: Things pretty common to most of us, COVID-19 media exposure, school closures, lockdowns, and of course, financial difficulties.
NATE: Is there anything we can do for people experiencing it?
CALLI: There are a few new treatments that help people regain a balanced sense of time, and it turns out, many of us might benefit from gaining a more balanced sense of time.
NATE: So where do we go from here?
CALLI: Well, there is more work to be done. They’re now starting to look at longer stretches of the pandemic and how 18 months of this kind of trauma might have affected loneliness, temporal disintegration, and other mental health issues. The more research we do, the better we can understand how these events really affect individuals, and huge portions of our population.
NATE: Who knew time was so important. Too bad I have to wait for more of these great insights.
CALLI: Hopefully not for too long. Or is it too short?
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up
CALLI: Time and time again, we hear that research is underway to reverse aging in humans, but this time, a biological way may have been discovered. By altering something called telomeres in humans, it’s been found that the DNA in 64-year-old research subjects has reverted to that of a 20-something adult! It’s not clear what the long term effects will be here, but if successful, this could yet again be an attempt to discover a literal fountain of youth!
NATE: Though public sentiment might have had you thinking otherwise, cooperation between strangers in the US has been on the rise over the last 50 years. This surprising and encouraging finding may be just the boost we needed to work together to tackle some of the world’s largest problems.
CALLI: A new study shows that many Americans have experienced a distorted sense of time due to the pandemic. Hours or days, or even weeks, may seem to fly by, or drag on, all due to an experience called temporal disintegration.