History/Aging

Over time I have gathered a lot of information about "history" and speculation about our past using archaeology, biology, geology, etc. I have not turned up my nose at creative fiction. As I get older, I find that thinking about mortality is practically unavoidable, so I have included some material about aging. I hope you find my eclectic taste interesting.

History and Archaeology

TOBA Catastrophe Theory - the Most Destructive Explosion Ever
TOP Topics - 06/15/2020 [5:59]

In this video we will show one of the most destructive events in the history of the planet earth. The explosion of the Toba supervolcano destroyed much of the world at the time and plunged the planet into the harsh ice age. The human population, numbering the last 1,000 individuals, fought for bare survival. Video me educational and informative purpose.

How this was made:
Auto-dubbed
Audio tracks for some languages were automatically generated.

Aging

Atul Gawande: What Dying Teaches Us About How to Live

Are we paying too much attention to how long we live, and too little to how well we live?

For most doctors, the goal is to help patients live as long as possible. But more time and more life aren't always the same things. In this episode of Staying Human, host Dr. Vivek Murthy and guest Dr. Atul Gawande, surgeon and author of the landmark book Being Mortal, discuss a question neither of them were trained as doctors: for a patient, what makes life worth living?

This conversation is part interview, part friendship, and part shared reckoning with what makes a life worth living. Atul reflects on how Being Mortal reshaped his own understanding of what it means to be a good doctor, and why the most important skill in medicine may be the simple act of asking patients what they actually want from life.

Along the way, Vivek and Atul get personal, sharing what it means caring for aging parents, the guilt that comes with it, and the loss of Atul's mother and Vivek's grandmother. They talk about belonging, the future of AI in medicine and the risk of human connection becoming a luxury, and the surprising things that make life meaningful - from chocolate ice cream and football to remembering the score in a ping pong game.

This episode is a conversation about what dying can teach us about living, and the questions worth asking the people we love before it's too late.