Research

New Russian research suggests that the human lifespan could be up to 156 years

The ceiling isn't where anyone thought, and neither is the thing holding it down.

The oldest human being on record made it to 122, but is that the best we can hope for or just the best we've done so far? And what's stopping us from going further? That's what researchers at Russia's Skoltech Biomed Technologies Center set out to answer, using a mathematical model that let them switch individual aging mechanisms on and off.

In this story by Erik Barnes, the ceiling turns out to be less interesting than the thing pressing down on it. Your liver replaces its own cells. Your skin does too. Two organs never picked up that trick, and they have been quietly setting the terms of getting older this whole time.

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And what did we learn?

Yesterday we shared research that says couples might not be fighting enough to stay healthy.

How often do GOOD readers argue with their better halves? It was almost a tie, but the almost-nevers among you won out with just over 35% of the vote.

• Weekly, and we're better for it (34.4%)

• Two or three times a month, mostly about the dishwasher (17.7%)

• Almost never, and we think that's a good sign (35.4%)

• We don't argue. We just get quiet for three days (12.5%)

Reader Tamara Manly spoke up for the second place “weekly” crowd. “Married for 45 years and really, really good at annoying each other!”

History | Courtesy of Upworthy

Care

ER doctor and mom sets the record straight for parents of kids with e-bikes and e-scooters

One doctor keeps meeting the same kid in her trauma bay.

Tech has a habit of blurring lines we used to take for granted. Smaller batteries, stronger motors, and suddenly the tidy distinction between a motorcycle and a bicycle gets pretty messy. Most e-bikes top out at 28 mph, and that's only because the law says anything faster is a motorcycle. 

An emergency physician noticed the consequences before anyone else did, because they keep arriving in her trauma bay all summer. In this story by Erik Barnes, Dr. Meghan Elizabeth Beach Martin describes what a crack in the pavement does at those speeds, plus a detail about what the kids are wearing (or very much aren't) that makes everything worse. She's a mom, and she's not convinced children should be on these at all.

The numbers aren't subtle either: more than 20,000 e-bike injuries a year, and e-scooter injuries climbing 45% annually. Martin has a short list she'd want every family to run through before the next ride, and it goes further than the usual parental safety lecture. The first item on it costs nothing.

On August 12, 1851, a former actor named Isaac Merritt Singer was granted U.S. Patent 8,294 for an improved sewing machine. He had not gone looking for one. He was renting space in a Boston workshop, hoping to drum up interest in a wood-carving machine, when he turned his attention to a sewing machine being built there. Singer looked at it, decided the design could be better, and built a working machine in about eleven days.

He was not the first. Elias Howe had patented his lockstitch machine years earlier, sued Singer for infringement, and won. Singer paid royalties. The tangle got so bad that the major rivals eventually pooled their patents rather than keep suing each other. Where Singer really changed the game was selling the device. His company staged demonstrations, accepted trade-ins, and pioneered an installment plan that let families take a machine home and pay for it over time.

That last idea sounds awfully familiar. Singer did not invent buying on credit, but his company helped turn installment payments into a powerful way to sell expensive consumer goods. Every checkout page offering four easy payments has a little Singer in its DNA, 175 years later. 

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💬 From the group text…

You’ve probably seen this; it was everywhere, but I was on vacation, and as a pilot myself, I simply have to share this! Absolute stunner of a landing in a crisis moment, and she’s only 21! I’ve been flying since before she was born, and I couldn’t even begin to imagine doing what she did here. Spectacular.

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