Mini: Life Expectancy

Why We Do What We Do · Sep 7, 2026 · 13m · transcript

How we understand, talk about, and think about life expectancy is sometimes misunderstood by some flukes of math. Understanding how numbers work can illuminate a clearer picture of history and mortality. Long story short, (or short story shorter, this is a mini afterall), there have been old people who lived to be old (very old) for most or all of human history.

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Links:

https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/united-states/life-expectancy#google_vignette

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4861644/…