Is it magic?

Ooof. “Miliband poised to overrule local opposition to build nuclear waste dumps” ☢️ Now this IS interesting, noting if I had one thing in my gift, it would be to remove the word “dump” from all reporting on a highly engineered geological disposal facility… www.yahoo.com/news/article...

Just got an email from a university based teacher trainer about “Why Don’t Things Fall Up? saying he has used it for “examples of good clear science communication, pitched to the right level for the right audience”. The audience is *you* and it is just 99p on Kindle for few more days (til end Sept)

This is one of those use-cases where AI is terrible: we should just create a standard format for flight times so app data are interoperable. AI makes baffling mistakes some significant minority of the time. If we'd invested the $00bns in standards instead of AI, the world would be a better place.

New ITP paper just dropped! 🧪 #longevityscience • Epicatechin, a flavanol found in cocoa, increased average lifespan by 5% in male mice. • Halofuginone, a compound that simulates protein restriction, +9%, again only in males. • Mitoglitazone, an experimental diabetes drug, also +9% in males only.

🎙️ Ep1 of @briancoxtalks.bsky.social A Question of Science is out & it's on ageing research! As @statto.bsky.social says “The single most important thing… is to campaign for more funding for ageing research!” Here's how 👉 bsra.org.uk/donate/ #BSRA #AgeingResearch #SciencePodcast

Here’s a taster of the new podcast from @crick.ac.uk. Do check out the full episode—it’s my dream panel of brilliant longevity experts, Profs Linda Partridge and Lynne Cox, Brian Cox hosting, and Paul Nurse who I think has a Nobel Prize or something? (And is also Director of The Crick.)

I had a lot of fun going back to The @crick.ac.uk (my old lab!) to record the first episode of their new podcast! Check it out at the link below (and make sure to watch @profbriancox.bsky.social’s teaser to the end…)

So…<does the maths>…the covid vaccines delivered somewhere between a 7200% and a 55,000% return?!?!? Fund science, kids.

There could be some exciting bark-throughs coming in canine longevity! From the @dogagingproject.bsky.social to companies developing longevity pills for pooches, it might not be long before we know how to get more time with our best friends—doggo and human. New by me in @sciencefocus.bsky.social:

Really enjoyed this piece from @adamjkucharski.bsky.social on the culture war between broad social improvements and targeted scientific understanding as ways to improve health. It’s frustrating because obviously both are important—but the former is often portrayed as somehow more worthy.

🎙️ New podcast series! In 'Beyond Curious with LCP' my guests and I will explore how changing demographic trends are reshaping our lives. We'll discuss impacts on pensions, healthcare, workplaces and the economy. 🎧 Listen here: www.lcp.com/en/podcasts/... #Longevity #Demographics #AgeingPopulation

On the same day in the Telegraph:

Will the absence of reliable automatic metro service in the United States mark the moment its citizens notice how far behind their country has fallen?

When I asked Google’s Gemini to ‘show thinking’ it seemed to be thinking the quiet part out loud…

So the raw milk thing is basically unpasteurised mansplaining?

If Xi and Putin want to live to 150, I would suggest they invest a decent fraction of their countries’ GDPs into longevity research.

I for one am very annoyed that I got chickenpox instead of the jab as a kid, and now have dormant herpesviruses hanging out in my neurons. Given that the shingles vaccine seems to reduce dementia risk, I can only assume that being immune to and therefore never having chickenpox would be even better

Besides the child suffering bit: If my child were to get chickenpox, they would be kept out of nursery until all sores scab. Potentially 5 days, meaning it's 5 days mum and I would have to fit childcare into work schedules. A healthy society is a working society.

Big props to MILES Car & Van Sharing—I got in touch with their customer support because the app didn’t work on @grapheneos.org, ended up chatting with someone who was considering the switch to Graphene (!!) and…the developers have now updated the app to work on secure phones!

earth science at NASA includes improving hurricane and wildfire prediction, just so you know

People commenting on my vid didn’t watch & assumed I’m bashing all AI, or blaming AI for human stupidity. The opposite: problem is that humans–even trained ones as in this case–have an automation bias that leads us to defer to machines. Organic imposter syndrome! Offload thinking > dull your mind

‘Since 2021, [longevity science] received €23 million, just 0.08% of the €27.9 billion Horizon Europe budget. For comparison, oncology has received €193 million so far, and the EU has launched an entire mission to tackle cancer.’ Essential reading for Europeans by @davidmjourno.bsky.social:

>>> 'blueberry'.count('b') 2 >>> datetime.fromtimestamp(1754353022).isoformat() '2025-08-05T01:17:02' Just because there exists a Birmingham screwdriver doesn’t mean you have to use it, even if they’re trying their best to make you.

NEW ANALYSIS: Wildfires have already scorched a UK-record land area in 2025, double the previous high – and 4x above average By Orla Dwyer, Ho Woo Nam + Tom Prater www.carbonbrief.org/...

Could Ozempic slow down aging?! A new study suggests yes—but, while they’re exciting preliminary results, there are a few caveats too. New Scientist asked me to send in a comment for their podcast—this is the full, uncut version of what I said! (reupload due to the original vid being cut short!)

Could Ozempic slow down aging?! A new study suggests yes—but, while they’re exciting preliminary results, there are a few caveats too. New Scientist asked me to send in a comment for their podcast—this is the full, uncut version of what I said!

Could Ozempic reverse the ageing process? Interesting preliminary study discussed here on the @newscientist.com podcast—with a cameo appearance from me, and a few people cycling home from work in Berlin!

Motherfucking wind farms…

Others have noted that this means foreign-born people are LESS likely than UK-born people to be in prison. What I want to note is that The Times is now referring to foreign-born UK citizens as ‘foreigners’. This includes Boris Johnson, Sir Mo Farah, Emma Watson, Rory Stewart and little old me.

Staggering. Pretty sure we could add multiple years, maybe a decade, to global life expectancy if we had $70 billion for longevity science…

Increasing science funding can directly increase efficiency, by increasing the odds of getting a grant funded meaning researchers need to spend less time writing grants. The US is currently running an experiment in the exact opposite…

Another brilliant graphic from Robert, making a very clear point based on a lot of data.

According to @economist.com, web search traffic is down over the last couple of years—due to people turning to AI rather than Google The search category falling the fastest is health—and that worries me, because I don’t think AI is ready for the prime-time here. 🧪 #health #ai THREAD INCOMING

According to @economist.com, web search traffic is down over the last couple of years—due to people turning to AI rather than Google The search category falling the fastest is health—and that worries me, because I don’t think AI is ready for the prime-time here. 🧪 #health #ai THREAD INCOMING

Posting about about "Why Don't Things Fall Up" because I want people to read it. I don't think anyone else could have written a book quite like it - it as been described as "a great idea, beautifully executed" Sold for £3 so you know this isn't about the money (I'll make pennies per copy sold).

Lucy Bronze on how she decided to blast her penalty down the middle (and score). “Statistically it’s risky for the goal keeper to stand still… so yeah, I love maths”.

Forcing science to make ‘challenging prioritisation choices’ is one of the worst things the government can do to stimulate economic growth and productivity, and ‘saves’ barely a rounding error on government spending. Want new cures and solutions to climate change? Science is how you get them.

Very sad to find out (while looking for a picture of him for something) that Fauja Singh, who was probably 114, was killed in a hit-and-run. :( That is not the way anyone should go, but especially a supercentenarian.

Two governments took The News Agents to secret court for two years via a constitutionally unprecedented superinjunction to stop you from hearing this story. The MoD is responsible for a data leak that put up to 100,000 Afghans at risk of death. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zdc6...

This gap in biomedical research funding between FY24 and FY25, it's new therapies that won't see the light of day, researchers moving away from science, and the evisceration of American research universities, which were until recently the envy and a model for the world.

The gut hormone mimetic era in medicine is just getting started www.nature.com/articles/s42... erictopol.substack.com/p/the-gut-br...

Yes, it's very hot. istheukhotrightnow.com

I am trying to get all my contacts to move from WhatsApp to Signal for privacy and security reasons. I wrote a quick article to help convince people to make the move, and published it on my website in case it helps anyone else make the case to friends and relatives. Please share if useful!

[email protected] tells Longevity Summit Dublin that how old you look is a remarkably good predictor of risk of death: 30,000 hospital admissions had their photo taken and those survival curves in the bottom right show huge differences in survival in people with different facial ages!

Can't help but have a mental image of this teeny thing tearing silently past us, on our twirling sapphire world of heart-breaking beauty and quiet vistas, conflict and suffering, stories and kisses, and beings that exist in 3 dimensions but think & love & dream in 4

My cartoon in this weeks @newyorker.com

NASA just won an Emmy for our live broadcast of the total solar eclipse last year. We produced a documentary film about the James Webb Space Telescope that's out in theaters and on Netflix. We have podcasts, we write feature stories. People wear the agency logo on t-shirts. We're still getting cut.

Should humanity exist? Let’s ask a man who cofounded an online payment-processing platform 27 years ago

I hadn't previously considered the possibility that the thing best placed to stop this AI bullshit was defamation law, but