Episode 52: Very old people and "Blue Zones"

The Studies Show Podcast

What’s the secret of living to 100? Well, it might be living in a “Blue Zone”: one of the handful of places around the world where there are apparently loads of centenarians. Except, as has been argued recently, Blue Zones might be a load of nonsense.

In this epside of The Studies Show, relative spring chickens Tom and Stuart look at some of the recent controversies in demography. Is there a limit to the human lifespan? Did someone really live 122 years? And how could researchers not have noticed the glaring problems with the whole idea of Blue Zones?

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Show notes

• “Millions Now Living Will Never Die”

• Nature paper on “Evidence for limits to the human lifespan”

  • Stuart’s response letter

  • Saul Newman’s critique

• Guardian article and Retraction Watch article on the resulting controversy

• 2020 New Yorker article on Jeanne Calment, the 122-year-old woman

• 2004 paper on “Blue Zones”; 2013 paper

• Blue Zones website and “Live to 100” cookbook

• Blue Zones food guidelines

• Saul Newman’s paper (2024 version) critiquing Blue Zones and supercentenarian research

• Saul Newman wins the Ig Nobel Prize

Credits

• The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.