of his latest book, "long for this world." >> host: your columbia university we are pleased to be joined by award winning professor jonathan weiner who has won the pulitzer and the national book critics circle award for previous books. his most recent book is "long for this world: the strange science of immortality." professor, who is abu tigre? >> guest: he is one of the most eccentric and interesting scientists i have ever met. he grew up in london, he studied in cambridge, england. and he became a computer scientist and developed the idea that we might live forever. or at least 1000 years, 10 dozen years, some modest claim like that. oddly enough, the more time i spend with aubrey, some of his

ideas about longevity should be worth taking seriously and be worth listening to. >> host: such as? >> guest: aubrey argues that aging should be viewed as something not immutable but something that we can study and understand and perhaps fight effectively. and that we can do more about aging now than we ever could before. those are ideas that i think the consensus is building around. although aubrey himself is extremely eccentric and extremely controversial, with good reason. most people in the field of gerontology, the study of aging and the science of aging, they

agree now that aging probably is something that we can understand better and that we can learn to control. better than what we do now. >> host: okay. >> guest: okay. >> host: that is the news we have been looking for for ages. aubrey is as good a spokesperson for that optimistic point of view as anybody on the planet. >> host: in the last 50 years, how have we manipulated our ability to control agent? >> guest: a lot of this is incorrect. a lot of the success that you and i are enjoying right now as we age, where we are aging more slowly than our parents and grandparents dead. we are very happy about that. we like the ages a lot of that has benefits over overall progress. sanitation in developed countries added a huge amount in the most mundane way to life

expectancy. vaccines, antibiotics, they had an enormous amounts to life expectancy in the 20th century. now, we are doing better with the elderly people in their 60s and 70s and 80s. they have better life expectancy than people of the same age, a generation back or two generations back. a lot of that is indirect. it is because overall, we are better at living healthy lives and treating diseases. making life comfortable for ourselves. again, that is in the countries where medicine has advanced, sanitation has advanced. there are billions of people in the world who still don't have those benefits. but for those of us who are lucky right now, we are living 10 years, 20 years more than our ancestors did. now the question is can you

study aging head-on, and can you do something about the deterioration of the 50s, 60s, 70s and on up? can we do anything about that that would give us another 20 or 30 or 40 years or more? by story's main character, aubrey de grey, rights to argue that if we can only extend life a little faster than we do now, medicine will keep advancing. faster than our own deterioration, and will essentially live forever. >> host: the century between the 20th and the, i'm sorry, the 19th and 20th century. what was the life expectancy? forty years? >> guest: turn of the 20th century i think it was 47 or 48 years. average life expectancy in the u.s. now we are up to about the 80s. an anonymous gain in just the

last century. >> host: how do we get to 1000? [laughter] >> guest: before we talk about how to get to 1000 years, but there are two questions here. there is can we and there is should we. can we and what we really want to? i think both of those questions are complicated. the technical side is her controversial and complicated. the philosophical side, the bioethical questions, should we and we want to do this if we can -- those are even more complicated. to me, personally, they may be the most difficult to resolve. i find myself deeply conflicted when i talk with someone like aubrey de grey. but if you want to talk about the technical side of the question, how could we do it, there are maybe seven outclasses of problems that we all run

into. aubrey de grey divides them very neatly into problems inside of ourselves in between ourselves, problems in the nuclear stand outside the new keyless grid too many cells here, too few there, a funny problem called costigan, all of our vernacular machinery starts to kind of stick together in places and that makes us more rigid inside and out. that is why our skin, for instance, starts to get wrinkly. it is not as flexible as it used to be. if you can target.com you can do something about wrangling and the more serious problems, problems that happen inside the body. hosni mubarak is the research being done on this? >> guest: yes, there is research

being done on the seven different kinds of aging problems. there are enzymes, for instance, that can go through your body and hit those prosperous. the trouble is that the little molecular scissors can necessarily tell the bad cross-links from the good stuff that makes arm and molecular machinery run. they are not specifically used enough to help. >> host: professor, one more example in the technical side before we get into the how and should we side. >> guest: one more example, well, if you look at where energy comes from. are molecular factor takes place with the mitochondria. in effect, that is our power

plant. the mitochondria are scattered through every cell. and they have some dna of their own. most of our dna is passed into the nucleus, the dark all at the center of every cell. there is some dna in the mitochondria. they developed mutations. those strands of dna. faster than the dna that are relatively safe and protected inside the nuclear us. aubrey de grey says what if we can take some of that dna and make copies of it and put it into the nuclear where will be safe from mutations, so that than the work of energy production can keep going without deteriorating and those mutations building up into power plants. we would be energetic for longer and longer. that is an argument that a few biologists have made before aubrey de grey. he has pulled together some interesting research that suggests it could be done. who knows?

maybe that would work someday. again, very controversial, a little bit far out right now. >> host: he had some other ideas that are even further out there. i have to say. my personal favorite is his graveyard idea. there is garbage that builds up in the cells. >> guest: if you could figure out how to help the body eliminate that garbage, indigestible stuff that her own bodies and the housekeeping enzymes to clean up, maybe we could live for decades or centuries longer. aubrey de grey says, we are the living things. where are the living things that figured out how to eat everything in nevada, including that the indigestible stuff in our bodies can't clear out? it is in graveyards. the bugs and germs and bacteria in ancient graveyards, like the ones in cambridge, centuries old

graveyard in cambridge where aubrey de grey lives, they are specialist in devouring every last bit of us. the foolish idea is cultivate some of those bacteria, figure out their secrets, figure out how they can devour in the rest of the indigestible stuff and use those to clean us out. >> host: no mention of diet, exercise, lifestyle. those are just peripheral? >> guest: those are essential, and that's really what we've got right now. when we are talking to a man like aubrey de grey, we are talking to a futurist. here in the present, the best bet is exercise, diet, getting enough sleep. exercise and diet are absolutely key. in fact, calorie restrictions,

manipulating diet in a simple way, is the one clearly proven method of adding some time to the lifespan of all kinds of living things. it is not yet proven that it will work for us. there are people trying. but it will work for worms, it will work for mice. it will work for fish. there are all sorts of species that will benefit from calorie restrictions. then you get into the question do you want this? is it really a net gain for you if you are going to cut your calorie consumption by a really sizable fraction. are your extra day is going to be worth it. most of us are voting at the restaurant. we are not choosing to cut or calories way down for a little bit longer. yes, absolutely, exercise, diet, all the common sense chicken

soup, that is still our best bet here. >> host: professor, what are some of the ethical considerations of extending life hundreds of more years. one of the biggest ethical concerns that most of us think of right away its population. the population explosion on the planet, they're already dangerous. if you start suddenly adding decades or even centuries to the human lifespan, leading to the population explosion? you're going to add enormous environmental problems that may completely swamp us. what good is it to be healthier longer if the planet is deteriorating around you. that is one of the most frightening complications of

aubrey's research program. aubrey argues against that that we have a population explosion, partly because of all of our successes and medicine. the vaccines, the antibiotics, that is why our population is expanding so dramatically. that is the key reason. would you want to go back until the inventors of those first antibiotics, stop, you're going to give us a population explosion? everybody wants those antibiotics and they want them to continue. we want more. so why should we argue against the anti-aging pioneers if we wanted help above all in the last hundred years? why not continue on the same

path? that is his argument. i think it is a pretty good argument and a tough one to argue against. at least, that is what i have found. operate, by the way, is the most difficult guy to argue with i have ever run into. even though he is taking this outlandish position that we can live 1000 years, if you have a beer with him, he's a very deep thinker. he is the first to admit. aubrey will say that every one of the common sense logical arguments that come to your mind against his program of living 1000 years is deeply flawed and he can knock it down in a second. in some of his counter arguments, i think, are really worth taking seriously. i will give you another one. most of us feel that there is

something about mortality that gives the seriousness of our lives. and that if we could be granted another 100 or 200,000 years, our lives would be rendered somehow less precious and meaningful of why would we need to try to accomplish anything tomorrow or the next year when there is still a next century or millennium to get around it. most of us feel as if mortality really structures our entire identities for better and worse. what happens if you take away all of that scaffolding and structure? what are you wrestling? you are just a puddle of jelly. you have the nightmarish feeling that we would cease to be you if you were granted an extra thousand years. aubrey has come back to that. his response to that is you

don't like it, if you can come up with that pill that would let you live a thousand years and you don't like it, you don't have to take it. that is a very simple reply. anybody who is so attached to getting older and dying, they will not be forced to live forever. this is a tough argument to argue. he argues that if you had the option that little bottle of pills that are sitting at your breakfast table tomorrow morning, and the doctor said yes, in fact, it looks like it works, and you then you can live for a thousand years, how many of us really would hesitate very long before we would took those pills? i know that i have defended the idea of living for centuries. i have had these arguments of

down and sideways for years. yet, i have to confess that every time i read a story in "the new york times" or technical journals that suggests that a breakthrough has been made and we really do have some way of doubling the life expectancy of mice, we have found some clue, maybe it reminds me of one of aubrey's arguments, the seven deadly sins that we can tear of aging, i find myself involuntarily dealing with the most irrational hope. maybe the guy is right, maybe this program can work, and maybe we can give ourselves all of these extra years. and that is very deep. the yes and no vote run very deep in the subject. deeper than words.

>> host: how old is aubrey? >> guest: he is 10 years younger than me, he is 40 years old now. when i met him, he was 38 years old. i have to say, he is aging at about the same rate as the rest of us, so i mind, and for all of the talk in the energy, aging is not slowing down very much on this planet right now. aubrey argues that what he is doing is not for him himself. it is not that he wants to live forever. it is just that he thinks this is the greatest single contribution that a human being can make to the welfare of humanity that something like 100,000 people die per day on this planet because of this tragedy of aging.

if he you could stop that, he would contribute more than the doctor keep cures cancer or alzheimer's or diabetes or any of the other scrooges of old age. if you could get at the root of the problem, why do all of those diseases emerge as we get older, what is changing in the body that we call aging that makes us more vulnerable to these diseases, if you could get at that, then he would have contributed more to civilization and the quality of human rights than anyone in the history of the world. that is what he is trying to do. >> host: who is funding his research? is their government money in the u.s. for his research. >> guest: there is money going to this research from government the united states has a national

institute of aging, for instance, a national institute of aging that funds research on alzheimer's and more speculative research programs like the ones we are talking about now. then there are also rich and middle of the road donors who give to aubrey's private foundation. he started something called the [inaudible name] foundation and now he runs a foundation with a slightly different name. he is not getting rich from these foundations and they are not sponsoring a huge amount of research, but this work is going on. unfortunately, the national institute of aging is a very important stepsister in the national institutes institute of health. there is much more money available, for instance, for research on cancer then there is research on aging.

that is another thing that emerged for me as i studied this question that i have begun to find problematic. single biggest risk factor for cancer is age. the older that we get, the more risk we are for it. what is that? what is changing in our bodies that is predisposing us to diseases like cancer or alzheimer's, which are very well funded as research problems and aging is that single biggest risk factor, and yet we spend much less money studying aging than we do those byproducts of aging. i think we are making a mistake there. many gerontologist say the same thing. that we should be spending a lot more time trying to understand aging. another shock to me in doing the research to this book was we

don't actually know what aging is. we are not any better equipped to describe aging badly our consciousness. consciousness is lying to us and we swim in a way that makes us age. we swim in time. we don't know what it is that makes nerves able to produce consciousness and we don't know what it is in our bodies that is making us age. if we could describe that, if we could understand exactly what it is that we mean by aging, then we would take a giant step toward these visionary programs of slowing the clock or stopping the clock or reversing the motions of getting younger. whatever the complexities be, the ethical complexities of a fight against aging, i think a

fight to understand aging is at least as important as anything else we are doing in medicine now. there is a reason why we have talked about these questions. ever since what the book of genesis, adam and eve and the snake in the garden, all of the world's first religions and first stories turned onto the question of aging and can we stop it. i think that those questions are still is deep for us as they ever were. we are more technically sophisticated year by year. it is very likely that these questions are going to become less and less a matter of time and more and more a present concern for us over the next several years.

>> host: professor jonathan weiner won the pulitzer prize for his book, "the beak of the finch." what is that about? >> guest: it is one the most extraordinary stories that i have a fond place in my heart for. to biologist at princeton university, peter and rosemary, go to darwin's island red they go every year. they have been doing this since 1973. a camp on the little desert island called daphne major in the middle of the galapagos. an island that darwin never saw. they watched in a document evolution in action. evolution by natural selection, year by year, they have watched it and seen it they have measured it, they understand it in exquisite detail. they are doing what darwin himself never imagined possible.

he thought it would take geological aging in order to see evolution in action, that no mortal could see it. it turns out that we mortals can watch it and we can watch it on darwin's island. i love that. i just love that. and i have gone back twice now to visit the galapagos and many times to visit peter and rosemary grant. looking over their shoulders, i think it is wonderful that they are still doing this research, all of these years later. he never retired. officially they have retired, but unofficially, they are still there every year in the galapagos, watching evolution. >> host: we have been talking with jonathan weiner acclimate university. this is his most recent book. "the lonely soldier: the private war of women serving in"long fot booktv.org to watch any of the programs you see here online. type the author or book title in

the search box and click on search. you can also share anything you see on booktv.org easily by clicking on share in the upper left side of the page and selecting format. booktv streams live online for 48 hours every weekend with top nonfiction books and authors. booktv.org. >> here is a look at some books that are being published this week. mary soames are the only surviving daughter of winston churchill, recounts her child during world war ii and a daughter's tale. and how washington abandoned main street while rescuing wall street, no grassley, former special inspector general overseeing the troubled asset relief program argues that the officials who perpetuated economic crisis pandered to big banks instead of considering public interest. a member of the judicial watch presents his thoughts on the

obama administration come including obamacare, bailouts and guantánamo bay in his book, the corruption chronicles. obama's big secrecy. the corruption and big government. in global weirdness, severe storms, heat waves, droughts, rising seas and the weather of the future, journalism and research foundation climate central analyzes the big questions regarding climate change. look for these titles and book stores this coming week and watch for the authors in the near future on booktv and on booktv.org. what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. >> i have three books. one is the passage to power by robert caro. which is about the competition and interactions between president kennedy and lyndon johnson. it is from lyndon johnson's

vantage point. that is a pretty interesting kind of hard-nosed politicians, both publicly and behind the scenes, jockeying for a position throughout the primary election of 1960, and then throughout the convention, which is very interesting. the other book is the social conquest of earth by edward wilson, which is basically how our species came to really rely on social interaction, emotional intelligence, and the way that we communicate with each other. how we build a social network. and how far back that goes. that is a really interesting book to be reading. at the same time you are reading about the kennedy and johnson interactions. because there is so much perception and emotional intelligence that is needed in the field of politics and reading people and all of this, this is something that our species has been evolving with

for a long, long time. the final book is by father thomas keating. it is called purple mess. father keating is somebody who started to promote centering prayer, which is a christian-based meditation. he is a benedictine monk it talks about our connection with god. he wrote this book about christian meditation. it's a beautiful book. we have a wide range of reading material this summer. >> for more information on this and other summer reading list, visit booktv.org. >> over the next three hours, booktv brings you coverage of the 19th aal