MIT Longevity Expert: Do These 3 Things Now to Stay Young, Live Longer, & Keep Doing What You Love

The Mel Robbins Podcast

Dr. Joseph Coughlin from MIT's Age Lab shares research-backed strategies to age well and maintain independence. The focus is on adding 'life' to years, not just extending lifespan through small daily habits and family co

Key takeaways

• Plan for everyday moments like getting ice cream

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. You and your loved ones are probably going to live a lot longer than you think. But right now, there's so much noise about longevity, biohacking, anti-aging, reversing this, optimizing that, but can we be honest with each other? Would you want to live to 100 if you are in horrible health? If it's painful to just get through the day? Of course not. That's why today's conversation with an extraordinary expert from MIT, it's not about adding more years to your life. It's about adding more life to your years. We're going to talk today about whether your life as you age stays big and exciting and fulfilling and meaningful or your life starts to shrink. We're also going to talk about what to do when you have people in your life, your parents, grandparents, loved ones, and you see their quality of life getting worse. Our extraordinary expert is Dr. Joseph Coughlin. He's the director of the MIT Age Lab, where they study what longer lives look like. And he is here in our Boston studios today to give you the simple shifts and all of this fascinating research that's going to do so much for you and your family. First of all, it's going to protect your freedom and your independence as you age. Because Dr. Coughlin says, based on the research, the choices you're making right now. Yes, you in your 20s, in your 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, they shape what the rest of your life is going to feel like. Dr. Coughlin also says there are three forces that quietly wear you down and chip away at your independence. And he will share what you can do to make sure that they don't. He's also got amazing research back advice for caregivers. I'm talking children of aging parents and grandparents, and the things that you really need to hear that are going to work. Very specific ways in particular that Dr. Coughlin wants you to think about caregiving. He's going to give you specific ways to approach the conversation with your family members that will reshape how you look at aging. Dr. Coughlin also has three questions that you must ask yourself, that will fundamentally change how you see and design your future. This is a conversation I really want you to share with your siblings, with your parents, with your grandparents, with your adult kids, with your friends. I cannot wait for you to experience it and meet Dr. Coughlin. Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. I am thrilled about our conversation today. It's always such an honor to be together and to spend this time with you. And if you're a new listener or you're here because somebody shared this with you, this is one of those episodes that you will be sharing with people and your family. It's that important. I just want to take a moment and welcome you personally to the Mel Robbins podcast family. Today, you and I are learning how to stay strong, sharp, and independent for a hundred years with the number one longevity expert, Dr. Joseph Coughlin, who founded in Leeds, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Age Lab, where he and his extraordinary team of researchers study how longer lives are transforming the way people work, retire, plan, and live. And he's here to tell you, based on the research, what it takes to prepare for a hundred good, juicy, awesome years, because you deserve that. that. Dr. Coughlin is a researcher, a professor in MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning, and an advisor to major corporations and institutions around the world. He has advised the World Economic Forum, and he has also served on the advisory committees for the U.S. government and multiple federal agencies and sitting presidents. The Wall Street Journal named him one of America's 12 pioneers inventing the future of retirement and aging, and if you thought that was enough, Dr. Coughlin is also also authored over 250 academic publications on aging, longevity, and demographic change, and the best-selling book, The Longevity Economy. So please help me welcome Dr. Joseph Coughlin to the Mel Robbins podcast. It's great to be here, Mel. Thanks for having me. I am so thrilled that you took time out of your busy lab over at MIT to come here today, and I am excited about your research. I would love to have you begin by, by speaking directly to the person who's listening or watching right now. And tell me what could be different about my life? If I take everything to heart that you're about to share, and I apply it to my own life, and I really apply it to the people in my life that are getting older. What could be different? The big difference is that if you're prepared, if you can envision what you think that future is going to be, and please, it's not going to be all about beach walks and pickleball and maybe even grandchildren, children. Those will be good punctuated moments, but hopefully the things that we're doing with my team at the MIT Age Lab and the conversation that we'll have is about being prepared for the little moments, the things that make you smile, the ability to stay in the home that you love and want to be with, the ability to provide care. It's about building capacity to live your best life. I know this is going to be one of those conversations where if you are older, you're going to feel seen. If you are in a caregiving role, you're going to feel supported and you're going to be given very specific things that you can do. And you have a real gift in terms of the way that you teach and you have a way of making this topic that's hard to talk about and understand in some ways easier and more fun to think about. But you do it in a way that's very, very practical. And so I think one of the things that people are going to get out of this conversation is a whole new way to think about the people that. that they love and to think about the role that you have to play in your own life and aging and in supporting others as they do. And Mel, I want everyone to give themselves a break. And what I mean by that is that not being prepared for old age is not an indictment. It's not like, oh, my God, I didn't do my plan. Old age is quite new. In the context that we're living, how long we're living, the expectations, multiple generations alive at the same time, if you're caring for a loved one today, if you're aging or your planning to age, this is an entirely new world without a map. So, Dr. Coughlin, especially given the work that you do at the MIT Age Lab, how do you want us to think about age? I want you to think about aging as an amazing gift of time. So I want you to imagine zero birth to 21 years old. Let's just make it easy for a lot of people, drinking age. From zero to 21 is about 8,000 days. You know, be generous with a math, but it's about 8,000 days. From 21 to midlife crisis, classically 46, 47 years old, 8,000 days. And from 46 to 47 to that Newtonian law of physics of retirement, 65 is 8,000 days. But most people don't know that the fastest growing part of the population, worldwide, by the way, is 85 plus. And 65 to 85 in change is 8,000 days. So if I take 0 to 21, I'll just call it gently, push it off to the, the side, call that childhood, or if you're a parent, expensive, you cross the, you know, off to the side. All of a sudden, retirement is not this short period of trip with the grandchildren to Disney. It's one-third of your adult life. It's a full 8,000 days. I love that 8,000 day framework, because when you think about your own life, especially looking backwards, you can see whether you're going 0 to 21 or 21 to 46 or 46 to 65, you know, to 80, whatever, there are so many different versions of you in each one of those 8,000 day segments of your life. And we do, especially as you get older, just kind of think, oh, well, now you're just in that bracket. And I think it's very hopeful and exciting to recognize that whether you are in the zero to 21 or 21 to 45 or 45 to 65 or 65 to 80 or 80 and up, that you have all of these different slices of life and future versions of yourself that you are going to get to experience and a lot of what we're going to learn today from you will fundamentally shift your mind and perspective about those future versions of you that will experience a decline in capacity potentially as you age. And that notion of future you, Mel, what you and I will be able to do is to put questions in people's minds to help them navigate basically an entirely unknown land. There's really no map for that older age other than, you know, did you save enough money and are you going to take a cruise ship? Life is far more complicated than that overall. And those questions will start conversations. You say there are three questions. Every one of us needs to ask ourselves when it comes to how we think about aging. The three questions, not necessarily in this order. The first one is, how are you going to get an ice cream cone? Sounds really silly, but it's got a number of dimensions to it. When we plan for older age, we tend to think about what do we want to do in older age? Well, I'm going to travel, spend time with family. There's so much to do around the house, I'll never get bored. Mel, do you remember COVID? We found something out about COVID. Except for the travel part, we found out that, A, all those hobbies you thought that were going to keep you busy and painting the spare bedroom three times was going to keep you busy for a lifetime got boring real fast. And secondly, we found that our significant other got tired of seeing us significantly 24-7. And so the first question is, how are you going to get an ice cream cone? Do you know the little things that make you smile? not that we're going to take the kids to Disney, not that, you know, we're going to maybe, if you're one of those folks, to downsize, those big monumental moments. Longer life or life at any stage is about the little moments. And so do you know the little things that make you smile? So for me, I want you to imagine it's a hot summer night. I want a soft serve. I want a spiral. I want a chocolate and vanilla. The other side of that question is not you know the little things that make you smile, but do you have access to them? 70% of Americans over the age of 50 live where if you don't drive, you don't get out. And an ice cream cone is one of those things on a hot summer night you want it to spur of the moment. You don't book a ride. You don't bother an adult daughter. You may not call up a neighbor. You just want it. The peepers are out. It's a hot summer night. You'll want it now. So do you know how you're going to get ice cream cone? Second thing, what are you going to do on any given Tuesday at 10.30? Sounds really crazy, right? that when we think about retirement planning, old age planning, we think about the big things that we're going to do. I've got so much I'm going to do. But, you know, believe it or not, research, you imagine somebody got money for this, did research and found out that Tuesday apparently is the most boring day of the year. Look, most of us don't want to have breakfast with anyone. Just give me my coffee and leave me alone. The bottom line is that by 10.30 in the morning, all of a sudden, you now need to structure your life. whether it was work, family, children, frankly, if you're no longer a caregiver, you had structure, you had things to do. Now at 10.30 on Tuesday, the average couple over age 65 watches upwards of four to five hours of TV per day. Oh, wow. So that notion that we're all going to be cruising and doing all this fun stuff, again, not totally incorrect, but there's a lot of Tuesdays out there. Third question, if you will, who's going to change your light bulbs? sounds again really silly. But I want you to start making a list. And I want that person who's listening to me right now. Start making a list of all the things that you take for granted that you do every day, maybe for yourself, for your spouse, your partner, or for a loved one, taking out the trash, making a meal, changing a light bulb. And look, as a guy, I do have to confess that I do want to climb the ladder and change the light bulb. I am likely to fall and break my hip because my wife's going to be at the base of the ladder saying, you're going to fall and break your hip, and that will be the thing that takes me down. But here's the thing I want to think about, because when things break, you need redundancy. So that person is going to change your light bulbs, it's not just whether you have the money to do that. In fact, in many ways, that's the easy part. Do you have someone that you trust? Someone that would go into your mother's home, she's 85 years old, cognitively not as sharp as she used to be. You can write the check, perhaps. Do you have somebody you trust to go in there by themselves? Is somebody that your mother's going to accept? Do you have somebody who's going to check on? If you don't call home or call a friend, who's going to call back to make sure everything's okay? I'll throw one other in there, and we can talk about this. Who are you going to have lunch with? And that is the social question. That is the question about how big is your social, we'll make it geeky, social network. frankly, how many friends do you have? And how well those friends come together is, frankly, in many ways, a bigger predictor of how well you'll age. Some really great research done by Julianne Holt-Lonstead suggests that do you know that being lonely or social isolation has the physical health impact of smoking 11 to 15 cigarettes per day? So it's not about, oh, gee, you're lonely, it's emotional. Yeah, it's all that, but it's also about hypertension, depression, and everything else. How many friends do you need? Generally speaking, we only have maybe one, two, and if you're really wealthy, and I mean wealthy in the social sense, three friends. And these are the folks that have your back when something happens wrong at two in the morning, when a loved one is critically ill. They're the ones who support you overall. And then I added friends under development. Because as I remember a woman I was interviewing in Chicago said to me, only a few years ago, I was asking her about, her social connection, and she leans over, and I think she was at 82, she leans over and she says to me, son, which if you look like this, being called son is a pretty cool thing. She goes, son, at my age, there's a natural attrition to friendship. You don't think about that. But over time, and it's not just the existential you lose friends due to death or disease, but they move on. They move away. And many people are going to hate me for saying this, but grandchildren actually hurt your friendships because what you used to do on a Friday night to go out to have dinner or a movie is like, oh, no, I'm going to babysitter. I can't wait to see baby Joey or, you know, whatever it might be. Those are great things. But you need to start thinking of your friendships as a portfolio. Indeed, I like to call it a social portfolio. We worry about our wealth portfolio, but think about your social portfolio. How robust, how rich is it overall? I want to stay on that grandkids' really impact your friendships as you get older as an adult. Because one of the things that I've noticed, just as my own parents are getting older, my mom is in her late 70s, my dad is in his early 80s, is I have seen the friendship attrition that you're talking about. And I've seen how they used to have this big group of people that they hung out with. And as they've gotten older, and certainly as people have died, or people have moved away, or people have stopped making the long drive down to Florida for the month in a cold winter month, their friend group has started to completely evaporate. What was once, 20 couples they hung out with, it's now two. And I also hear what you're saying about how when your family starts to grow, which is a wonderful thing, whether it's with son-in-laws, daughter-in-laws, or it is with kids, or it is grandkids, it's a wonderful thing, but you tend to then, focus in on prioritizing family, which is very important, and you forget about the importance of the social network that's your age that you also still need. So really, this older age is about time and structure and connection more than anything else. Well, that brings me to the work that you're doing at the MIT Age Lab that is so revolutionary and profound because you have created a way for us to, go there and to not just try to imagine what it's going to be like, but to truly experience the impact of aging. I would love to hear you just explain to the person listening or watching right now. What is the work that you're doing at MIT? And you brought along what looks like an astronaut suit, complete with a helmet, that I am going to call the astronaut aging suit that you put people in, and it simulates what it can feel like to be the future you, who is 90 years old, trying to go through your day-to-day life. And it really just hits you right in the gut. And I think that kind of frames up best what the MIT Age Lab is. Look, I have the privilege of being here to speak with you, but the Age Lab is made up of 30 really gifted researchers and students that do the work. I get to talk about it. And look, while we are attentive to nutrition and exercise and things like that, what we really look at is where does design, technology, and human behavior come together to rethink where you're going to live. What is the future design of communities? What does the future of the vehicle, the car look like? How will you receive care? So we're on the physical side of doing. And so the lab looks at things such as what is the future transportation? How do we redesign our communities, not to be just friendly for aging, but to be age-ready. Caregiving. How do we actually provide care to loved ones? And how do we receive care? And much of what we will be speaking about, longevity planning, not just plan for our financial security. How do we plan for a longer, better life overall? And then probably the other main area that we like to work on is the multi-generational workplace. Do you remember when the workplace was there are younger workers and there were old older workers. Imagine this. We now have not one, two, three, four, or five. We have upwards of six generations in the workplace, shall we say, generational kinetics of expectation, how we work, what we do and like in the workplace. So longer life, longevity changes everything. And the Age Lab is about trying to redesign the systems to support living longer and better. And they also happen to have a profound impact on the systems in your mindset. Yes. That have you not be able to predict what it's going to be like for you as you age and to also have you not understand what the people that you love are going through right now as they are aging. And you have this astronaut aging suit. Agnes. Agnes. And what is Agnes stands for? Agnes, we love acronyms at MIT. So Agnes stands for the age, gain, now, empathy, system. Dr. Coughlin's brought his team. The suit is hanging outside, and I'm going to try it on, and I will narrate step by step by step what's happening. I will do my best to explain what I am feeling in real time as I am experiencing the MIT Age Lab simulation of the way that aging can compromise your capacity to move, to pick things up, to see, to do the simple things day to day. and I am really excited because I think this is going to have a profound impact on me and you, whether you're listening and watching. And it's aging and it's more about the health conditions that kind of correlate with aging quite often. So diabetes, arthritis, diminished vision function. But, Mel, one of the things I think you're going to experience as do my students and the companies we work with is the aha moment, which is, yeah, we interview older adults. We watch them in the wild. We're kind of creepy. We watch in the house, the car, the store, home. whatever it might be. But it's when you wear the suit that you kind of like get it. It's like, why is this more difficult than it should be? Because as a designer, as an engineer, you say, that's not acceptable. I can change the material. I can change the design. I can make it better. So just so you know, Mel, and for all the listeners, you may hear some like tearing and clinking and clanging. It's going to be