Three Not-So-Bad Things on Aging and Longevity
A Weekly Newsletter
There’s no denying it: we are constantly bombarded with bad news. A pandemic, climate change, inflation, war, political discord—the list goes on. Here at the Longevity Project, we understand that bad news can be enough to take years off your life, so we want to do our part (however small) to balance the scales.
At the end of the day, though, we’re realists. Good news is hard to come by, no matter how hard you look. So we’ll aim a little lower and without further ado, we are pleased to share our first weekly newsletter: Three Not-So-Bad Things on Longevity and Aging. Feel free to share with others and send us items you want to see included. With some luck, you will see this newsletter (and some more not so bad news) every Wednesday.
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MARCH 26, 2025
Several faithful readers wrote in to point out that last week’s newsletter was not entirely faithful to our “not so bad” promise, since we reported both on elder poverty and various unpleasantries at the Social Security Administration. And to add insult to injury, we added a fourth item to the newsletter, so we weren’t even faithful to the “three” in our name. We won’t promise never to report on negative developments – sometimes the news requires it -- but this week, we are sticking to our knitting and offering ways to improve your mental health, the centenarian party of the week, and even an opportunity to join a new religion if you are so inclined:
1. Put Down That Phone, and Step Away.
Yesterday, according to the app on our much beloved iPhone, we picked it up a mere 202 times. Perhaps it was feeling lonely, since the day before, we picked it up over 250 times.
What would it be like if we didn’t pick it up at all? That is a question considered in a new study led by researchers from the University of Alberta in Canada. In the study, participants agreed to block internet access to their phones for two weeks so that the researchers could assess the impact of a digital holiday on mental health, subjective well-being, and sustained attention.
If you’re looking at this on your phone, perhaps you’ve already jumped ahead to read the study or listen to an NPR story on it - but if you haven’t, here is the bottom line: between 70 and 75% of participants reported better mental health and better sense of well-being after taking time away from their digital companions. And, perhaps most intriguingly, the break also improved participant’s attention span, as measured by a computer test. Attention span typically declines with age, but the researchers found such a large improvement in attention that they characterized it as the equivalent of shedding ten years of age.
Our recommendation: consider going cold turkey on your smart phone, unless of course that is how you access TNSB.
2. We're Going To Party Like It's 1929.
We’re early to bed types here at TNSB, so we don’t get too bent out of shape when we don’t receive a party invitation, but we would have definitely shown up for Hilda Jackson’s 105th birthday party last month. Every centenarian should have a birthday party, but Jackson did not just want a cake and a few celebratory words. She wanted a rave.
And that’s what she got, including a special birthday performance from Nottingham rapper Bru-C (you can listen to his song, “Let it Go” here), and drinks provided by Jägermeister. Glow sticks, paint, gin and tonics, and probably a birthday cake squeezed in there: the party was lit.
Jackson also shared her recipe for healthy aging, which is playing tennis, watching tennis (especially Wimbledon), and talking about tennis. We want our own 105th birthday rave, but until then, we will see you on the courts.
3. What We Need For These Trying Times is a New Religion.
And longevity enthusiast and supplement fanatic Bryan Johnson is here to provide it for you. Earlier this month, he unveiled the Don’t Die religion, on X of course (no Dead Sea Scrolls for the modern man), modestly saying that it will “becomes history's fastest-growing ideology. + it saves the human race + ushers in an existence more spectacular than we can imagine.”.
We’re not theologians here at TNSB, so it’s understandable that we are having a little trouble parsing the sacred texts (Johnson’s tweetstorm that is), but it appears that the Don’t Die religion is an extension of Johnson’s philosophy of personal health optimization combined with the singularity, the merger of humans and AI. It’s a twist, we suppose, on the traditional religions that promise an afterlife, replaced with the pursuit of eternal life here on earth instead.
There are elements of this religion we can get behind, specifically the admonition to not kill each other and not to kill the planet. But Johnson may be an unlikely apostle for this new religion. Last week, the New York Times ran an extensive expose of Johnson’s abuse of confidentiality agreements and suggested that his zeal for confidentiality masked a desire to cover up some rather unpleasant workplace behaviors. But you know what they say about “thee without sin”.
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