Ep. 90 - Why We Age

Consider this: the Greenland Shark can live for more than 400 years and appears to remain physically fit and fertile to the end.

Or this: there is a jellyfish that swims in the Mediterranean and the seas around Japan whose individuals are capable of reverting back to the larval state and regrow to adulthood countless times. In a sense, it is biologically immortal.

The question of exactly how and why we age has titillated scientific minds for centuries, yet there is no agreement, let alone a useful answer. There are a myriad of competing theories and will touch on most of them in succeeding weeks. But today, I’d like to examine the one theory I most think speaks to what most likely believe. And that is, our bodies have a sort of built-in obsolescence of tissues. The ‘disposable soma’ theory portends that once you and I have passed our reproductive years that nature no longer has much use for us.