The Dan Buettner Podcast Nature's Anti-Aging Secrets with Dr. Steve Austad
19 snips
Feb 26, 2026 
Dr. Steve Austad, biologist and aging researcher who studies how nature solves longevity, shares fascinating examples from 500-year clams to long-lived bats. He explores why different species age at different rates. Topics include cellular damage, promising drugs like rapamycin and GLP-1s, lifestyle tips to slow aging, the 150-year bet, and why animal insights may reshape human lifespan research.
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Aging Rates Vary Wildly Across Species
- Aging rates vary enormously across species rather than being fixed.
- Clams can live 500+ years and show growth rings that allow precise aging, revealing nature's extreme solutions to slow aging.
Ming The Clam And Anti-Clumping Clues
- Steve described the famous 508-year-old clam Ming and how researchers can test clam tissue for anti-clumping factors.
- They put suspected Alzheimer's protein into clam 'juice' and it failed to clump, suggesting transferable protective factors.
Bats Live Far Longer Than Size Predicts
- Small animals like bats live far longer than expected for their body size and stay healthy into old age.
- Bats can live up to 10× longer than similar-sized mammals and retain spatial memory and high-frequency hearing for decades.
